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Nau, Louis John, 1869-1935. 
Readings on fundamental 
moral theology 





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READINGS 


ON 


Fundamental Moral Theology 


BY THE 


RT. REV. LOUIS J.’NAU, S.T.D. 
Rector of Mount St. Mary Seminary of the West 


CINCINNATI, OHIO 





FREDERICK PUSTET COMPANY, Inc. 
NEW YORK +} CINCINNATI 


1926 












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Preface 


HESE studies are intended as supplementary reading to 
Sabetti-Barrett. This well-known textbook on moral 
theology is admittedly very brief and deals more with 

conclusions deduced from principles, than with the proof of 
the principles. This is especially true in the first or funda- 
mental part. It takes for granted that the principles of 
psychology and ethics underlying human acts, the norm of 
morality, laws and legislation, moral obligation, etc., have 
been fully established in the course of philosophy. Experience 
however proves that the students coming for theology, though 
they have a knowledge and judgment of these philosophical 
principles, have not understood their full bearing on the 
morality of concrete acts. For the purpose of reviewing and 
refreshing these former studies and to give the more talented 
and industrious students a better insight into the principles on 
which the conclusions of moral theology are based, an extension 
course was arranged for them in Mount St. Mary Seminary of 
the West. ‘These studies contain some of the lectures given 
in this course during the year 1925-1926. They are published 
in book form in the hope that they will interest former students 
and priests engaged in parochial work and urge them on to a 
_ deeper study of the basic principles of moral theology. They 
make no pretense to originality nor to the clamorous research 
work so much in vogue today. Nor do they pretend to be 
exhaustive. Their purpose is rather to be stimulative by 
putting some of these problems before the student for investi- 
gation and deeper study. 


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Preamble 


St. Thomas and the Ethics of Human Conduct 


T. THOMAS studies questions of Moral Theology ex 
professo in the second part of his Summa Theologica. 
Both the external and internal order of questions studied 

in the Summa are theocentric, starting with God and ending 
with Him. The Angelic Doctor indicates the reason for the 
division of his Summa into three parts in the following words: 
“Since the principal purpose of this sacred doctrine (theology) 
is to give knowledge of God not only as He is in Himself but 
also as He is the principal and end of all things and more 
especially of the rational creature, desiring to give an exposition 
of this doctrine, we will treat first of God; secondly of the 
motion of the rational creature towards God; and thirdly of 
Christ who (as He is man) is the way for us to come to God”’ 
(I, q. 2. caption to article one). In the second part which 
treats of ethics God is studied as the final cause and man is 
studied in as far as he is a rational creature tending naturally 
towards God. The second part of the Summa was admired 
already by contemporaries as the most original and brilliant 
treatise in the Summa. 

To formulate a system of ethics thoroughly practical and at 
the same time to observe a rigid external order in the disposition 
of the subject matter and an internal order reducing the various 
principles to be applied to a basic underlying principle was not 
an easy task. But St. Thomas knew so well how to combine 
consideration of the universal with the particular, analysis 
with synthesis, deduction with induction as to enable him to 
put forward a system of morals both speculative and at the 
same time empirically practical in an eminent degree. 

The second part of the Summa especially deserves the 
encomium which Leo XIII passed on the works of the Angelic 
‘Doctor: ‘Among the scholastic doctors, the chief and master 


5 


6 Preamble 








of all, towers St. Thomas of Aquinas who, as Cajetan observes, 
‘because he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, 
in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all.’ 
The doctrines of those illustrious men like the scattered mem- 
bers of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, 
distributed in wonderful order and so increased with important 
additions that he is rightly esteemed the special bulwark 
and glory of the Catholic Faith’ (Encyclical Aeterni Patris— 
Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, Benziger Bros., p. 48). Speak- 
ing of the practical value of the Summa the same Pontiff says: 
“The teachings of St. Thomas on the true meaning of liberty, 
which at times is running into license, on the divine origin of 
all authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just 
rule of princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual 
charity one towards another—on all of these and kindred 
subjects have a very great and invincible force to overturn 
those principles of the new order which are well known to be 
dangerous to the peaceful order of things and to public safety”’ 
Gbids pbb 

The central and pivotal thought which gives internal and 
cohesive order to the teachings on moral conduct in the Summa 
is the same as in the whole philosophic system of St. Thomas, 
namely, the study of the concept of being. Just as in his 
psychologic study of the intellect the Truth of Being is searched 
out, thus in the psychology of the will the whole question 
hinges on the Gocd of the Being. ‘The rational being expresses 
the fullness of his personal being by the deliberate acts of the 
will. The fullness of personality is expressed by the acts of the 
will guided by the intellect because these two faculties consti- 
tute the being of personality. The fullness of personal being 
can be found only where there is control of acts. This control 
is exercised by the personal being because the will is free to 
choose as it will the created objects for which it can strive. 
It can thus freely choose because every created object is 
contingent and defective in being. That which attracts the 


Preamble 7 





will is the good of the object. Every being is good in the degree 
in which it partakes of being, that is, in as far as it possesses 
the requisite perfection which nature has apportioned to its 
being. The lack of this being constitutes evil which is therefore 
non-being and as such cannot attract the will. 

To strive for, to enjoy and to love the fullness of being is the 
ultimate end of the will and towards this the will by nature is 
oriented. All its particular ends are ranged under and toward 
this ultimate end. ‘The good of the object, of the circumstances 
surrounding the object, of the end for which it is sought all 
are attractions for the will. Its passive potency lies in this, it 
can thus be attracted by the good. Its control arises because 
when thus attracted the will can determine itself by its active 
potency to act or not to act. 

The intellect studies the truth of being as it is in the knower, 
namely, as the external object is faithfully reproduced in the 
passive intellect of the knower; the will strives for the good of 
the object as it is in reality. The fullness of being in reality is 
found only in God, the subsistent being in itself, the 7psuwm esse 
subsistens. “I am who am, I am being, Jahve,”’ is the definition 
of Himself which God gave to Moses. God is the highest good 
because good and being coincide. As He is the highest being 
in reality, the 7pswm esse subsistens, He is the highest good in 
reality. For “a thing is said to be perfect in the measure in 
which it is an actu” (I, q. 4, a. 1), 1.e., the degree of a being’s 
perfection depends on the degree of its actuality. God is 
highest good in actuality and therefore He is the ultimate end 
of the will. 

The fullness of being in actuality hence the fullness of good 
of the divine essence prompted God to create, namely, to give 
being to things outside of Himself which had it not. The 
exemplar, the image and likeness of things created is the divine 
essence which as it moved God to create the beings that are, so 
it was given to them as the norm of their perfection. This is 
the Eternal Reason of God and His Eternal Law. Conse- 


8 Preamble 


quently the moral good of man is in the approach to this norm. 
Consequently, too, the expressions of his personal being by 
acts over which he has control will be qualified as good or bad 
as they are in conformity or deformity to this norm of being 
which God—the divine essence, has set for him. 

The relation of human persons to human persons and to 
human society are judged by this same law and from it the 
obligations of man to man as an individual and as a social 
being spring. In his political teaching the Angelic Doctor 
applies the same theory: “The individual person is a part of 
the multitude, and every man as he 7s and as he has is of the 
multitude, just as every part is of the whole’ (I, q. 96, a. 4). 
For the benefit of the multitude he must give a part of what he 
has to receive back from the multitude in another form what 
he has given up for it. 

Now it would be a fatal mistake to deduce from these 
considerations that the whole synthesis of Thomistic philosophy 
and especially of the parts which treat of the ethics of human 
conduct is based on mere a priorz reasoning. In the search 
for the truth of being the Angelic Doctor proceeds by a 
posteriort analysis. From the analysis of consciousness he 
shows that the first concept of the mind is being, which then 
is reasoned about, judged, and the formal conclusions of an svt, 
quid sit, cur sit, propter quid sit are drawn. ‘This analysis, 
too, brings the evaluation of the truth, the mind image faithfully 
reflects the reality of things and thus scepticism is banished and 
knowledge and science are possible. His study of truth does 
not stop at the mental image, it goes out through the medium of 
the mental image to reality. Being is not a mere mental image, 
it exists in reality in the particular and the concrete and the 
mental image of it is a true likeness of this reality which is 
tested by the criterion of things as they are. This same 
criterion is applied to human acts and to their morality. He 
studies human personality as it is and as it expresses itself by 
personal acts and then formulates his final synthesis. 


Preamble | 9 


Herein lies the vigor and freshness of the whole Thomistic 
system, namely, truth is not a figment of the mind, it is founded 
on realities, the will does not rediscover as in the system of 
Kant the being and knowledge objects and their values which a 
sceptical mind has lost. A thing is not good because God has 
so willed but God so willed because the thing is good. The 
created will has a natural inclination to the good to the reason- 
able; the fitness of the object and the good, the beauty, the 
reasonableness, attract it. The will determines itself as it is 
attracted by the good of the object. Because of the weakness 
and defectiveness of man’s powers it may be deceived and 
accept the apparent for the real; because of its own imperfec- 
tion passions, affections and habits may grip it but, unless it 
has gone insane, it can hold the mastery for its natural bent, 
inclination and orientation is towards the good which is the 
fullness of reality. Thus the ethics of St. Thomas hold the 
balance equally between exaggerated individualism and social- 
ism, between exaggerated indeterminism and absolute predeter- 
minism. (Cf. L’Anima di San Tomaso, by Olgiati, professor 
in University of Milan; Societa Editrice Vita et Pensiero, 
Milan, 1923, translated by John 8S. Zybura under the title: 
“The Key to the Study of St. Thomas,” Herder, St. Louis, 
1925.) 





CHAPTER ONE 


Free Will and Moral Obligation 


ARTICLE I 


The Psychology of the Free Will 


HE psychic activity of man falls under the purview of 
moral theology in as far as his acts are attributable to 
his human person, i.e., such acts over which he can 

exercise control. Such are the acts of the sense and spirit life. 
The mere vegetative life acts are beyond this control. 

In this restricted sense the psychic activity of man proceeds 
from two faculties classified generically as the cognitive and 
appetitive. ‘Two cognitive faculties are distinguished, namely, 
the sensuous and the intellectual. Under the sensuous the 
five external and the four internal senses are ranged. Corre- 
spondingly two appetitive faculties are distinguished: to wit, 
the inferior or sense appetite, the superior or rational appetite. 

Many among the moderns wish to distinguish a third 
generic faculty, namely, feeling or better, perhaps, the emo- 
tional faculty. Though a distinction can be made between 
feeling, emotion and appetency, in reality they denote varying 
states of the one appetitive faculty as it is slight or vehement 
or efficacious. They are varying inclinations toward the good 
or aversion from evil. And are thus all three nothing else than 
inclinations toward an object as it is good or evil and in conse- 
quence belong to the appetitive faculty. (Cf. Donat, S.J., 
Psychologia, Innsbruck, 1928, n. 371 sqq. Maher, S.J., Psy- 
chology, ec. III, XII, XIX.) 

Every being by a natural tendency seeks its own good. 
By good is here meant that which does or can bestow a per- 
fection on a thing, or that which can help a thing to acquire 
or retain that condition of being which is proper to it. Con- 


11 


12 Fundamental 


sidered thus it is called the worthy good (bonwm honestwm); 
considered merely in the light of pleasure, either sensuous or 
intellectual, it can produce, it is called the delectable good; 
considered in as far as it is means to another good, it is called 
the useful good. In the question of morals the bonwm honestum 
is considered in its relation to the law of God and as such is 
called the moral good. 

The good, in as far as it is not merely the terminus of the 
appetite but is exactly that which prompts by its own force 
theappetite actually to go out toit, is called the end. The ration- 
al appetitive faculty by which man pursues his good is the will. 
It is the efficient cause of all human acts. The final cause of 
such acts, namely, that which calls forth the activity of the will 
is the good of the being of the object towards which this activity 
tends. 

The will of itself is undetermined to act, or not to act. Its 
determinant in the abstract is the good in general. In the 
concrete, it is some particular good apprehended as such. The 
definite good is therefore that which determines the will which 
is in potentiality to become active and to place this particular 
act. The will, of course, is mistress of her own acts, in so far 
as she can accept or reject the good proposed but yet if she 
does will, it is because of the good proposed. The efficient 
cause of the action and of the act is the will, but the cause which 
moves the will is the good of the end. To the question: 
Then why is the act posited? The answer must be: Because 
the will so willed; and to the further question: Why did the 
will posit this particular act and not another? The answer 
is: Because of the good of the end. 

The causality of the final cause is said to be metaphorical, 
not, however, as if it were a mere fiction, but to distinguish it 
from the efficient cause. St. Thomas points out the difference: 
“As the influence of the efficient cause is to act, the influence 
of the final cause is to be sought after and to be desired.” ! 


(1) Quaest. Disp. de verit. 22 ad 2. 


Moral Theology 13 








The final cause does not unfold any activity—it is “causa 
movens non mota’”’. ‘The activity goes out from the appetitive 
faculty which is so disposed by nature that it may (or must) 
go out to its affinity—the good which is proposed to it. 

The causality of the final cause does not extend to the 
subjective element of the act, i.e., the being of the act, it 
refers to the objective side, the specification of the act. 

. The final cause is not identical with the formal cause which, 
too, because it gives the matter its differentiating form, is a 
principle of specification. Acts take their species from the 
formal object. The difference lies in this: the final cause 
does not move the will simply to the good but on account of 
the good it moves the will to something else. 

The final cause exercises its causal influence in a threefold 
manner: 

a. ‘To fix the intention on the end; 

b. ‘To use means to the end; 

¢ To attain the end or to effect the end in its physical 
being. Finis obtinendus vel efficiendus. 

This latter causality might in a cursory consideration seem 
to imply self-generation. However, the active elements of the 
cause are the ideal good of the intended end and as such are 
acts of apprehending and willing. In the effect the physical 
being of the end obtained takes form in connection with the 
activities produced by these acts of apprehension and willing. 

From this, too, it is understood, why the apprehension of 
the good, as at least not impossible of attainment, must precede 
every causal activity of the end. 

The will is a blind faculty, its appetite is ‘““motws non movens’’. 
The good of the being (of the object) must be brought to it 
and specified for it by some other faculty. The appetibility 
of the object able to draw it is objective; but it cannot present 
itself to the will except through a cognitive faculty. “ Nihil 
volitum nisi precognitum.”’ 





214 Hundamental 





The will is the motor of the psychic acts of man; and the 
psychic activity of man is subject to the command of the will. 
However, the will cannot move the intellect unless previously 
some thought of the object has presented itself to the mind. 
Hence the axiom, “‘the first thought of a thing is not subject to 
the command of the will.” For the will cannot determine 
itself to act unless the good of the object has been previously 
presented to it for selection. Nor can the will directly work 
on the object by lending the object a convincing motive which 
it has not of itself, in other words the will cannot produce 
evidence capable of moving the intellect where none such 
exists. The will can command reason to study the object 
more intimately, to examine it more closely; it cannot increase 
or lesson the vision power of the intellect, but it can give it a 
different viewpoint. The light in which reason works must 
be there, but the will can command the intellect to train the 
spotlight from a different angle, to exclude the sidelights, to 
dim or darken the light. To start with, therefore, there must 
be a something which at least gives a vague or undefined 
motive for the incipient assent of the intellect. “Then the will 
can give the intellect a bent, a disposition or a condition which 
otherwise would be lacking. In this way the will can muddle 
even the self-evident first principles, and thus the act of the 
intellect depends on the act of the will and is commanded by it. 
This force is not despotically but diplomatically compelling, 
for the intellect in turn can and does sway the will. Again 
as there is nothing in the intellect except through the senses, 
the senses through the intellect can grip the will and the will 
in turn can sway the intellect to hold the mastery, and thus 
there is an interplay of cognition and appetency. 

In as far, and only in as far, as these faculties are in man’s 
control can he be held accountable for their acts, and thus the 
question arises: is this control free? 

Free will, or rather to be more exact, free choice (St. Thomas 
always speaks of liberum arbitrium rather than of libera voluntas) 


Moral Theology 15 








-negatively means a freedom from an external cause compelling 
man to do something against his will (libertas a coactione); 
positively it means (1) the power to act or not to act (labertas 
contradictionis); (2) the power to place this act in preference to 
another (libertas specificationis). This freedom of the human 
will is based on the natural propensity of the will to be moved 
by the good. This, of course, is a necessity, the same as in 
order that the sight can see, a colored object must be brought 
within the radius of its vision. In this sense the will is in 
potentiality to be moved. 

When the good is placed before it in this present life the will 
is free to accept or reject it. “The reason,’’ says Leo XIII, 
“Judges that it is equally possible for each and every created 
good to be or not to be and, in consequence of this, discerning 
that none need of necessity be taken up gives the will the power 
and option to elect as it chooses.”’2 St. Thomas expresses this 
same truth in the following words: “If the will is offered an 
object which is good universally and from every viewpoint 
the will tends to it of necessity, if it wills anything at all since 
it cannot will the opposite (evil).”’* “If on the other hand 
the will is offered an object that isnot good from every view- 
point it will not tend to it of necessity. Lack of any good isa 
non-good.’’ Therefore the reason why the will is free with 
regard to created good is: all such good is contingent, all such 
good is defective. Therefore freedom of the will arises from a 
disproportion between subject and object. The subject, the 
will, is unlimited in its tendency to the good; the object, the 
created good is limited. Thus the will, which is in potentiality 
to be moved by any good, has the potency to move itself freely 
to any good. If we inquire further, why can the will determine 
itself in face of any particular good to act or not to act, i.e., to 
accept or reject it, or prefer one good to another, the answer is: 


(2) Eneyclieal, Libertas. See Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, p. 186. Benziger Bros. 


(3) Summa I-II, q. x, a. 2. Passages from the Summa are generally quoted from the 
translation of the Dominican Fathers. London, Burns & Oates. 


(4) Ibid. 








16 Fundamental 








every particular good is contingent and defective, and therefore 
the will is free in its choice. 

This act of choice is the fruit of a united act of the reason 
and the will. “Man acts from judgment, because by his 
apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided 
or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some 
particular act, is not from natural instinct, but from some act 
of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judg- 
ment and retains the power to be inclined to various things. 
For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses as 
we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now 
particular operations are contingent.’’> This free choice is 
not merely of the reason, it belongs likewise to the rational 
appetite. ‘‘Choice is a desire proceeding from counsel. Now 
counsel is terminated first by the judgment of reason; secondly, 
by the acceptance of the appetite.”’« “The will can tend 
freely towards various objects precisely because the reason can 
have various perceptions of the good.”’ ‘‘Wherefore the root of 
liberty is the will as the subject thereof but reason is the cause.” 7 
Thus the real principle of man’s liberty les not in the first - 
direct apprehension of the object, nor in the direct practical 
judgment, but in the reflex selective decision: this is to be 
done because it is good. 


ARTICLE II 
The Norm of Morality 


Though man has a control over his faculties, when brought 
face to face with actuality he senses a command, ‘‘I must do 
this or I must leave this undone.” This prompting arises 
from moral obligation. The good presented is evaluated by 
the standards of morality. According as it conforms or is 
opposed to these standards the decision is given I must or 


(5) I, q. 83, a. 4. (6) Ibid., a. 3. (7) Ibid., a. 1. 


Moral Theology . ! 17 








I must not do this. Hence the further inquiry arises: Why 
is it that when the moral good is presented to the intellect, it 
pronounces the judgment, “‘I must do this’; and why is it that 
the will feels itself constrained to follow this judgment? 

Divine Providence compels the irrational being to obtain 
its end and purpose by a physical necessity which we call 
instinct. Man is led by a moral necessity to attain the end 
which this same Divine Providence has predetermined. Within 
this predetermined order of God which is to lead him to his 
ultimate happiness, man further provides for himself and those 
subject to him by his own free choice. This free choice may 
not, of course, run counter to the order willed by God. 

The divine order is established from all eternity by the one 
pure and immutable act of God, which is His divine essence 
itself. Human intelligence cannot grasp the oneness of this 
act. Wherefore we distinguish between the command of 
God which decreed this order and the motive which impelled 
Him to so will. God’s eternal will loving the infinite goodness 
of His divine essence prompted Him in His wisdom to ordain 
an order of nature which reflects the infinite goodness in the 
things created. This is lex aeterna, or as St. Thomas explains, 
“the eternal concept of the divine mind is the ratio of the 
eternal law in as far as it is ordained by God for the government 
of things which He foreknew.”’ 

The human intellect perceives this essential and necessary 
order of things in the creation and the government of the world 
and thus man’s intelligence is said to participate of the divine 
and eternal reason. At the same time human reason sees the 
necessity of conforming to this order and expresses the necessity 
which is upon it by the word “I must’. For whoever ac- 
knowledges the existence of this order and acknowledges that 
it exists by divine ordination by a spontaneous conclusion of 
his reason says, “‘I must,”’ expressing thereby the necessity of 
subjection to the will of God, commanding it to be obeyed. 
Furthermore since nature and even divine positive revelation 


18 | Fundamental 











sketch this order merely in its outlines it immediately appears 
to human reason that a further ordination of human life, 
whether considered individually or socially, is necessary. 
Human reason perceiving this necessity and grasping that it 
has in its power the active faculty of meeting it, sets about to 
thus further determine an order within the divine order for 
itself and for those who are subjects. Thus ordaining human 
reason becomes participant of the active excellence of divine 
reason and its ordination is but the complement and continua- 
tion of the divine. . 

Could man by an intuition see this order in God Himself, 
he would adore God as its author and creator. In this adora- 
tion he would be conscious of a formal necessity of obeying 
the order established. This obedience would be strictly 
theological, namely, in the sense that such obedience is due 
God because He is God. 

However, here upon earth man can read this order only in 
things created, wherefore without a formal recognition of God 
the “I must’’ can be perceived and pronounced. For since 
the judgment “‘I must” is an actus discursivus, a logical de-- 
duction, it does not necessarily imply I must because God so 
wills, it may stop at the conclusion I must because sound 
reason so dictates. 

Nominally an obligation is defined: ‘“‘An objective, absolute 
necessity enjoined on the will.” 

Objective necessity is opposed here to subjective coercion 
or determination to one particular thing. It means, therefore, 
a necessity perceived by the intellect and placed by it before 
the will. It is absolute because just as physical necessity 
excludes any and all exceptions so, too, this moral necessity 
excludes every exception. The verdict is simply, “‘I must.” 
It is enjoined on the will which feels itself psychologically 
bound, yet free. 

The psychological definition would thus be: A moral 
obligation expressed by the word “I must” is a spontaneous 


Moral Theology 19 











(not free) idea of a something which I must do. There is a 
consciousness that I am free and yet that there is a something 
which is extorted by a spontaneous command of my reason. 
Varying effects of sorrow or satisfaction, as the case may be, 
are the signs of these movements of my intellect and of my will. 

This spontaneous act is explained to be a quasi innate and 

invincible appetite. It is invincible in the sense that, if I act 
~ contrary to it, I feel that I am doing something irrational. 
My speculative judgment is absolute in telling me ‘“‘good is 
to be done, evil is to be avoided’. My practical judgment 
tells me this act now to be posited is good and therefore 
must be done, or it tells me it is evil and must not be done. 

All particular ends which man has are united essentially in 
one final end of man’s whole life, namely his own personal 
happiness. 

That there must be such an essential union of particular 
ends is proven as follows: (a) the very nature of an end de- 
mands that its good be obtainable, otherwise it cannot exercise 
a causal influence upon the will. Nowa good which is infinitely 
distant and which can be obtained only by an infinite number 
of steps, as it were, is in reality unobtainable. ‘Therefore, it 
cannot be an end. (b) Every man believing in God and in 
Divine Providence must plan his whole life in an orderly manner. 
In the order of intention the end comes first; in the order of 
execution the means to the end comes first. If, then, the 
particular ends and means do not converge in an essential 
connection to one ultimate end there can be no first and no last. 
Therefore, no orderly planned life. 

This does not mean that the good of a particular end or of 
an act cannot of itself appeal as conformable to the dignity of 
man. Nor does it mean that no deliberate appetite for a 
particular good can be elicited unless it be referred formally to 
the absolute final end of man’s whole life. Experience dis- 
proves this. What is asserted is: Every particular good end, 
which we intend, is intended because by its very nature it is 


20 Fundamental 








intimately united in some manner to the ultimate end of our 
whole life and is able to satisfy in part at least the infinite 
capacity, as it were, of man for the good. St. Augustine 
expresses this saying: “‘Man, lest he be miserable, is wicked 
and because he is wicked he is the more miserable. For the 
sake of doing away with misery and for the sake of acquiring 
happiness, men do whatsoever they do of either good or evil. 
They always wish to be happy, whether they live rightly or 
evilly. But all do not attain what they wish; all wish to be 
happy but they will not be, unless they live justly.’’ 1 

This final end of man’s whole life must be absolutely one. 
Every being strives for the full measure of perfection that is 
proper to its nature. Therefore, the absolute final end must so 
completely satisfy man’s appetite for the perfection which is 
proper to his nature that there is nothing over or beyond this 
for which he really hungers. 

This final end of man’s whole life in the natural order is the 
knowledge and love of God, giving man that relative perfect 
happiness which is proper to his nature. In the supernatural 
order it is the vision of God’s essence and the perfect love of 
friendship with God, in which is perfect happiness proper to 
God alone and as such entirely supernatural and absolutely 
over and beyond created nature. 

This appetite is not necessarily the formal craving for 
happiness as if it were based on the following reason: I wish 
to be happy. But I cannot be happy unless I do good and 
avoid evil. Therefore I will do good and avoid evil. A 
self-examination will prove that we often feel that we are 
bound to do a thing, without thinking at all whether this act 
will bring happiness. Contrariwise, a person will not conclude 
that he is free of an obligation simply because he thinks the 
act will be a perversion of his own happiness; for instance, 
a materialist who convinces himself that there is no hereafter, 
may yet feel bound to sacrifice his life in war because he thinks - 

(1) In Psal. 62. 





ACEMMOHeOoUp EO as ii Nh Mes 21 





patriotism demands it. Such a one knows full well that the 
act of sacrifice is contrary to the only happiness he considers 
possible, to wit, continued existence here upon earth. 

This dictate of obligation rather arises from that deep 
seated and inborn tendency to observe the order detected 
by reason, which inclination, per consequens, is called a 

rational inclination. “The virtues,’ says St. Thomas, 
- “preexist in that natural predisposition to the highest good 
which resides in reason recognizing the good and then in the 
will naturally striving to attain it. Thus Cicero was right 
when he said that the germs of virtue are implanted in us by 
nature.”’2 As nature in its being imitates and participates 
of the divine essence so, too, this rational inclination imitates 
and participates of divine holiness. ‘“‘Since all things subject 
to Divine Providence are ruled and measured by the eternal 
law, it is manifest that they all participate to some extent 
in the eternal law, in as much as by the stamp of that law upon 
them they have their inclination to their several acts and needs. 
But among the rest the rational creature is subject to Divine 
Providence in a more excellent way, being itself a partaker 
in Providence, providing for itself and others.”’ 3 

God’s Providence is a decree of the eternal divine wisdom 
motivated by the love of His divine essence in holiness so, too, 
the decree of my intellect, ‘I must,” springs from a knowledge 
of God’s ordination and is motivated by the holiness of that 
divine ordination. On account of His holiness God wills the 
order of reason. On account of participating in this holiness 
man’s will has a necessary inclination to the moral good and 
an aversion from doing moral evil. 

Lest, however, we imagine that this inclination is a blind 
instinct, our own consciousness tells us that “‘I must’ expresses 
more than an inclination or a propensity to do good. The 
“T must” remains even after we make up our minds to do 
contrariwise. Inclination would only lead to this conclusion: 


(2) III Sent., dist. 38, q. 1, a.2 ¢. (3) Summa I-IT, q. 91, a. 2. 








22 Fundamental 


if you wish to follow your inclination you will do this. Now 
we all feel that ‘‘I must’ is a much more absolute dictate than 
this. It abstracts from this inclination and tells me “‘I must’’, 
whether I am inclined to do so or not. 

To sum up therefore this dictate of conscience, “‘I must’ 
expresses implicity at least a perceived necessity to subject 
myself to the order to which by nature I am inclined. This 
subjection I perceive because I perceive that my nature is 
created and in consequence dependent. Wherefore it stirs 
up a consciousness, I must obey this superior. ‘“‘I must” 
therefore signifies, not by a physical necessity or inclination, 
I will to do this, but by a moral necessity I am forced to do so. 
This moral necessity les in the fact that I perceive myself to 
be subject and therefore I must obey, otherwise I will do wrong. 
I can physically indeed do wrong but morally I may not do it. 

Just as the infinite necessity of God’s holy will is explained 
by His sanctity, so our moral necessity is explained by our 
participated sanctity and the consciousness that we are sub- 
jects. Wherefore again not merely this participated sanctity, 
but this sanctity controlled by consciousness of our subjection - 
imposes upon our will this moral necessity which we express 
by the word “I must’. 4 

In the concrete, when placed face to face before the question 
what shall I do to act rightly, “the I must do this’ is a practical 
judgment telling me this act is in conformity with the estab- 
lished order of morality, to wit, the eternal law; in its negative 
form it is the same practical judgment telling me I must not 
do this because this act runs counter to the established order 
of morality. In this sense we are said to be bound by the 
practical judgment because we recognize the command to be, 
as it were, the command of another who has authority to bind 
the will to posit this action. 


(4) Cf. Vermeersch, Theol. Mor., vol. 1, Nos. 156, 157, 158. 


Hloral Theology 


1 | 
| w 





ARTICLE III 
Conscience 


The dictate “‘I must do this or leave this undone’”’ is gener- 
ally called conscience. Etymologically conscience, derived 
from the Latin word, conscientia, means the common knowledge 
of many persons. In a derivative sense it is taken to mean: 
the “habitual knowledge of the principles of the eternal law 
congenital, as it were, to all who have the use of reason’. ! 
‘“‘Let no one,” says St. John Chrysostom, “‘pretend to ascribe 
the neglect of virtue to ignorance or say he has no guide or no 
one to show the way. We have a competent teacher, namely 
conscience, of whose aid no one is deprived. For the knowledge 
of what is to be done and what is to be left undone is in man 
from the day in which he is formed.” 2 In a further derived 
sense the term signifies the application of this knowledge to 
particular acts and likewise the estimate of an act placed, 
“namely, whether or not it was in accordance with the moral 
law. Here we intend to use the term in the sense: It is “‘the 
application of knowledge to particular acts’.* Or as Suarez 
describes it, “the actual and practical judgment of the intellect 
discerning about things to be done whether they are good or 
bad, right or wrong, commanded or forbidden.‘ Sanchez 
tersely unites the definition and the description saying: ‘‘Con- 
science is the judgment of reason proposing the object to the 
will as good or bad.”’ > 

The dictate of conscience is an act of the intellect or under- 
standing. The very manner in which we speak of conscience 
as pronouncing judgment proves this. Further the will being 
a blind faculty needs a rule so that its deliberate act may be 
directed rightly. This rule must be of a kind that is actually 





(1) Romans II, 12-26: ‘“‘Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their con- 
science bearing witness to them and their thought between themselves accusing or also de- 
fending one another’”’ (ibid. 16). 

(2) In Genesim Hom., 64, n. 1. 

(3) St. Thomas, Summa I, Cento aele oY Loe 

(4) Suarez, Tract Tit; disp. IPA als ual 

(5) Sanchez de praec. Dec. L. L, CG: 9, n. ei Cf. Bouquillon, Theol. Mor. Fund., n. 254. 


24 Fundamental 


present to us and actually directs us towards the object be- 
fitting our rational being. To thus direct is an act of the 
intellect. This directive force isa practical judgment because 
it directs us how to act or rather how to do. It does not 
pronounce the judgment “this is true’, but the judgment 
‘St is true that I must do or not do this’. It is further said 
to be practico-practical because here and now it applies the 
practical judgments of doing, such as: thou shalt not steal; 
give to each one his due; honor thy father and thy mother; 
to acts which must be done by me here and now. * 

The judgment which discerns whether the thing to be 
done is in accordance or not with right reason after the thing 
has been done passes the verdict whether it was right or wrong. 
This verdict stirs up in the will varying affections of joy, 
peace, fear, anxiety, sorrow, remorse, as it is favorable or 
unfavorable. This is called the conscientia consequens. It is 
not a something new added to or different from the conscientia 
antecedens. It is the same conscience, distinguished as it is, 
looking to the present or to the past. It is not mere sentiment, 
it is a judgment which connaturally stirs up these varying 
affections which are not conscience but the effects of con- 
cience.? The fact that some, who are keen in discerning 
right from wrong, are sluggish to react to such judgment does 
not necessarily demand that conscience be likewise of the will. 
The intellect does not rule the will slavishly but diplomatically. 
Knowledge alone does not make a good man. The scintilla 
animae, of which the mystics speak, is reason’s participation 
of the infinite truth and the will’s participation of the infinite 
good. One can put down conscience but one cannot quench 
this spark, because it is connatural and congenital to the in- 
tellect and the will. 

Some moderns * have revived the opinion said to be of the 
older Franciscan school, namely, conscience is not exclusively 





(6) Frins: Actibus Humanis, vol. III, 66. 
(2) Toe 69. 
(8) Koch-Preuss, vol. I, pp. 186-193. Linsemaier, Moraltheologie, §29, 2. 


Moral Theology | 25 








of the intellect but is likewise of the will. This was the opinion 
of Alexander of Hales. St. Bonaventure cannot be invoked 
in its favor. His distinction was between conscience and 
synteresis, the latter being the habit of first principles of moral- 
ity. St. Bonaventure made it a habit of the will, describing 
it as a “weight on the will inclining it to the good’”’. But few 
of the scholastics accepted this distinction, they claim 
synteresis, too, is of the intellect. ° 

Conscience thus differs from synteresis—the one is a habit, 
the other an act of the intellect. It differs, too, from conscien- 
tiousness, which is a habit of the will to follow the dictates of 
conscience quickly, readily and easily. It differs from pru- 
dence, which is the right estimate of circumstances in the order 
of obligation, and from the science of moral theology, which 
is the knowledge of the general conclusions. All of these 
are helps and means to form a right conscience or judgment. 1° 
Conscience is thus the herald proclaiming the eternal law to 
the individual for his individual guidance. Wherefore one is 
bound to follow it. Erroneous conscience, known as such, 
must be corrected. Since conscience is a judgment it must 
be certain about the obligation: if reason wavers it must use 
reflex principles to become stable, such as a doubtful law does 
not oblige. ‘This is called forming conscience. The judgment 
then pronounced is: it is true that in this circumstance I may 
or may not do this act. 

The objection raised especially in non-Catholic schools of 
morals, namely, to proclaim conscience as the herald applying 
an external law to our actions is against human dignity, was 
answered by St. Thomas. Real conscience, they claim, exists 
only there where the inner voice which urges to do good and 
warns against evil, is the dictate of man’s own nature and not 
that of a superior will. St. Thomas teaches that man’s dignity 
lies chiefly in this: ‘‘He is his own lawgiver, since he instructs 


(9) Frins, 1. c. 65. 
(10) Bouquillon, |. c. 254. 


26 Fundamental 


himself and urges himself on to that which is good.”’1: “But 
just as in the theoretical recognition of truth reason has no 
creative activity, but has to conform itself to a reality infinitely 
higher than itself, so in its practical activity reason is not a 
creative and final norm but rather a means of making known a 
higher and infinitely perfect will.’ 12 

St. Thomas carefully distinguishes between the influence of 
external rules and the interior voice of conscience. He says: 
“Although many things are not evil because forbidden by an 
external law, they are nevertheless evil because forbidden by 
an interior law. For the interior law is the light of reason 
itself, by means of which we discern what we have todo. Any 
human action which is in keeping with this light is good; 
whatever is contrary to it is unnatural to man and evil, and is 
termed evil in as much as it is forbidden by the interior law.” 


ARTICLE IV 
Sin 
Man is responsible only for his human acts; these and these 
only does he place in his true capacity as a man, namely, as a 
free moral agent. This responsibility is either unto merit or 
demerit, in as far as the object to which the act goes out is in 


conformity or deformity with the law of God. The object, 
however, is to be taken in the concrete, 1.e., with all the attend- 


(11) In Epist. ad Romanos, c. 2. 


(12) Summa I, II, q.71,a.6. In L. II sent., dist. 42, q.1,a.4,ad 3. Cf. Catholic Moral 
Teaching and its Antagonists, by Joseph Mausbach, translated by A. M. Buchanan, Part II, 
chapter 1. Wagner, New York. 


Duns Scotus was generally credited with being an extreme Indeterminist in his dis- 
cussions on Free Will, and a forerunner of Kant. This view has been much changed since the 
publication of the epoch-making work of P. Ephrem Longpre, O.F.M., entitled La Philosophie 
du B. Duns Scotus (Paris, 1924). Examining critically the works attributed to Scotus, the 
learned Franciscan proves that the De primo principio, Quaestiones in metaphysicam, Opus 
Oxoniense, Reportata Parisiensia are certainly authentic; but that the De reum principiis and 
the Theoremata were not written by the Subtle Doctor, and that the other works attributed to 
him are of doubtful origin. Specifically with regard to questions of Fundamental Moral 
Theology this new review of the opinions of Duns Scotus has brought the avowal from M. De 
Wulf that Intellectualism according to Scotus dominates the whole question of conduct; that 
the morality of acts depends foremost on the object and the end relative to the dictate of reason, 
that the Doctor Subtilis explains conscience, synteresis, right reason, prudence in intellectual- 
istic terms just as the Angelic Doctor does. De Wulf, Histoire de Philosophie Médiévale. 
Fifth edition, vol. II, p. 80 (Paris, 1924-25). 





HMoral Theology 27 





ing circumstances and with the end or purpose the agent has 
in view. 

This law is brought home to man by his conscience, which 
in a practical manner tells him what is to be done or left undone 
in the given circumstance. This practical judgment is formed 
by the study of nature, namely, of things as they are, i.e., in 
the order in which God stands to man, man stands to God, 
and to fellowman. This study is made more easy, more 
definite and more certain by the study of the positive law 
given by God directly through revelation, or indirectly through 
human authority, acting in His name and in His stead. 

Man senses that he is free, unless his will is securely tied 
down by law. The “I must’’, motivated by the intellect’s 
participation of the divine truth and the will’s participation 
of the divine sanctity, is therefore only pronounced when 
conscience, by a present, practical judgment (which means 
certainty), tells him in this circumstance you are bound. 

~ Man when he acts according to this dictate of conscience 
is responsible unto merit; contrariwise, if he acts against it, 
he is responsible unto demerit. 

The good of the being (of the object) aes be brought to 
the will and specified for it by some other faculty. The 
God-given true guide is reason. The appetibility of the object 
able to draw the will is objective, it is in the being of the object 
itself, but it cannot present itself to the will, except through a 
cognitive faculty. 

The intellect forms the idea of a universal good which no 
particular good can exhaust and tells us that it exists, not 
indeed in its universal form, but particularized in the things 
that are. Naturally, we strive for happiness, but as it is de- 
termined in this or that particular good. ‘The good is present 
in things in two ways,” says St. Thomas, “to wit, in the ordering 
of one thing in its relation to another and in the ordering of 
things in their relation to the ultimate end....... And as things 
are ordered to their ultimate end through the agency of their 


28 Fundamental 


own particular end their relation to their ultimate end varies 
according to the diversity of their own particular ends. We 
say therefore as the ultimate end of all being is one, to wit, 
God; so also the ultimate end of all volition is one, to 
wit, God. This, however, does not touch the particular ends and 
when in accordance with these ends, the right relation of the 
will to the ultimate end is secured, the will is morally good; 
if not, it is morally perverse.’’: Hence, we are free to elect 
whichsoever good we choose. And it is exactly this liberty 
which makes it possible subjectively for man to sin. 

“The rational mind naturally is drawn to hannineee 
universally and indeterminately, and in this it cannot fail, 
but the movement of the created will is not determined to 
seek this or that particular good, and thus in seeking happiness 
one can sin, if he seeks it where it ought not to be sought, as 
for instance, he seeks for happiness in sensuous pleasure. 
This holds for all good, for nothing is sought except under the 
guise of good, as Dionysius says (cap. IV de div. nom.). It 
is thus because the appetite of the good is natural to the mind, 
but not the appetite for this or that particular good, and hence 
man can fall into sin.” 2 

St. Thomas defines sin to be a ‘‘bad moral act’’.* Not, 
however, as if he wished to range a good or bad moral act as a 
species under the genus moral act. There is no common factor 
in moral acts which allows one to predicate good or bad of 
them indifferently. 

When one says it is a moral act, he already says of necessity, 
good or bad, just as when we say “being’’, we necessarily 
insinuate a certain kind of being. 

Further, though we speak of a ‘“‘theological specification” of 
sin into mortal or venial, they are not philosophical or natural 
species. Sin, strictly speaking, is only one, namely, mortal. 
Venial sin participates of sin in a diminished ratio. (Cf. below.) 
wee: In II sent., dist. 38, q. 1, a. 1, c. 


(2) Quaes. disp. de pis dq. XX1V, 18.00 ad 6.) Cf, ibid, art.)o. 
(3) Summa I, II, q. 7, a. 6. 


HHoral Theology | 29 














E'ssence of Sin—Sin, in as far as it is a bad act, implies a 
privation of good, since it is a receding of some kind from the 
order of reason. In as far as it is a moral act, it is a going out 
to a good, toward which the appetite is inordinately drawn. 
Bad as such, does not appeal to the appetite, which goes out 
to bad only under the guise of good, or as it is joined to a good 
which we love. Bad is, therefore, voluntary only per accidens. 
Though the whole act is corrupted and is bad, yet in the election 
of the bad, under the guise of good, a vestige of the positive 
order remains. Wherefore St. Thomas says: “‘Malwm in 
moralibus est quoddam bonum adjunctum privationr alterius 
bon.” 4 Inthe physical order, there can be a total or a partial 
privation of good, as for instance, deafness and hard of hearing, 
but in the moral order, the positive appetence is totally bad 
because it lays the foundation for the election of the bad. 

“Though the sinner does not wish the deformity of sin, 
- none the less, the deformity of sin comes under the will of the 
sinner who elects to incur the deformity rather than to refrain 
from the act.’ Before the tribunal of conscience sin is 
presented under a double aspect: Reason sees the delectable 
good coming from the sinful act, but at the same time sees that 
it is against the order of nature. In temptation, there is a 
conflict between the appetibility of the object and the law, 
but when the sinful act is posited, the sinner directly and 
primarily wills the delectation, but since it cannot be enjoyed 
without the deformity, he wills this indirectly. Though 
indirect, the choice is positive, for as St. Thomas explains: 
“He who wills to enjoy a pleasure so vehemently that he does 
not refuse to incur the deformity which he perceives to be joined 
to it, is said to will not only the good which he wishes princi- 
pally, but likewise the deformity which he chooses to suffer 
rather than be deprived of the good desired.”’ ¢ 

(4) Summa I, q. 48, a. 1 ad 2 et I, II, q. 73, a. 2. 


(5) S. Thomas, de Malo, q. III, a. 2, ad 1. 
(6) De Malo, q. ITI, a. 2. 








30 Fundamental 








But how can a man positively choose that which he knows 
to entail a deprival of his real good? 

The answer to this riddle is found in the cognitive process 
of man’s reason. The passive intellect contains nothing 
except what it has inferred from the senses: ‘“‘ Nzhil est on 
intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu.’ The senses are the 
foundation and origin of human knowledge. Sensible reality 
acts on the understanding by means of the phantasm or the 
image from which the active intellect forms the impressed 
intelligible species. This, by its action on the possible intellect, 
gives rise to the expressed species, “‘verbuwm mentis,’”’ or idea. 

Now, ‘‘more men,”’ says St. Thomas, “‘follow the beginning 
of things, rather than their consummation.’’7 Wherefore 
more men will follow the inclination of the senses than the order 
of reason. 

The affections of the senses are called passions because the 
agent (the object presented to the senses under the guise of 
a good) little by little changes the connatural state of the 
patient to one which is more in harmony with the agent. The 
state thus brought about changes the viewpoint, inclination 
and disposition of the patient towards the particular good 
which thus appears more agreeable and fitting to the appetite 
and draws it more strongly. “‘Such as a man is, such the end 
will appear to him.”’ 8 

Such stirring up of the appetite can be to either good or bad 
moral acts, because of the preponderant part played by the 
sense passion in sinful acts; in the every day language it gener- 
ally has the meaning of something morally wrong. Under the 
influence of passion a vice is easily begotten but it can, too, 
be turned to good advantage and beget virtue. ‘‘Since,”’ 
says St. Thomas, “‘human nature is a composite of body and 
soul and of an intellectual and sensitive nature, it pertains to 





(7) Summa I, II, q. 71, a. 3. 
z @) Summa I, II, q. 22, a. 1 et 2. De verit, q. 26, a. 3, dist. 15, q. 2, a.1. Aristotle Ethica 
Cae 


Moral Theology 31 














the perfection (good) of man to subject his acts to virtue his 
whole being, to wit, this intellectual and sensitive part and 
the body.’’* As either virtue or vice thus dominate, the sense 
appetite will be a help or a detriment to positing good moral 
acts. For, says St. Thomas, ‘“‘as is manifest, man is changed 
in his dispositions according to his sense appetite so that when 
he is in a certain passion a thing will appeal to him as fitting, 
which would not so appeal if he were otherwise disposed... . and 
thus the sense appetite moves the will, not indeed in a despotic 
manner as a slave is ruled but in a diplomatic manner as free 
citizens are ruled.” : ° 

Not only sense objects but likewise the immaterial goods 
such as honor, glory, fame, self-interest, family pride, etc., can 
affect the appetite in an analogical manner. The former 
attract through the senses, the latter play more directly upon 
the will. Both can have this effect antecedently to and beyond 
the judgment of the intellect. Because of his composite 
nature they are connatural to man. ‘They present a con- 
natural good to the appetite, they insinuate themselves gradual- 
ly and suavely and then draw the will with great force. The 
will readily reacts and yields to them. If then these goods be 
of evil in the order of morality, the will, being thus affected 
and changed, as it were, in its most intimate nature, neglects 
the higher good for the sinful. Under the eagerness of the will 
reason ceases from considering the right rule, and thus the will 
produces the act of sin.:: ‘“‘Man naturally is intent by his 
senses and by his mind upon the things agreeable to the 
appetite.’”’:2. These movements, in as far as they are spon- 
taneous, affect the freedom of choice in the sense that the will 
is not as free as it would otherwise be, but there is no coercion 
from without, the force is entirely connatural to the will which 
goes out to it voluntarily and even, perhaps, more so than 


(9) De Malo, q. 12, a. 7. 
(LO)BI TL ds.9;-a, 2,.et lbid.,.ad 3. Cl..etiam ibid..q. 10;/a.°3% 
(11) Summa I, II, q. 55, a. 2, ad 1. 
(12) Frins, De Actibus Humanis, vol. I, p. 317. 


32 Fundamental 








when it is not under the spell. The eagerness of pursuit has 
been heightened in the will. +3 

But all sins cannot be ascribed thus to sense-passion 
subjectively, as for instance the sins of infidelity. Even the 
sins of the sense-passions often have a deeper foundation in 
fact, namely, inordinate self-love. In the words of St. Francis 
de Sales: ‘‘No doubt the will rules love, since she loves as she 
chooses, and among the many loves presented to her affection 
she chooses as she prefers: but having chosen one, she lives in 
it and is ruled by it and thus the will takes on the qualities of 
the love she has espoused.’”’ This explains the seeming 
paradox: we sense that we are free and yet at the same time 
we seem to be slaves. Now man loves himself as a totality, 
he loves both his sensitive and his rational and spiritual being. 
The good love their sensitive being as it is subservient to the 
rational; the bad make their spiritual being subservient to 
the sensitive. And thus, a friendship arises between man and 
either his interior or his exterior self. Now argues St. Thomas: 
“Five things enter into friendship: First, the friend wishes his 
friend to be and to live; secondly, he wishes him “‘good’’; 
thirdly, he strives to procure this good for him; fourthly, he 
enjoys his company; and lastly, he is one with him in weal or 
woe. Thus the good love themselves according to the interior 
man, whom they wish to retain in his integrity; they wish him 
goods which are spiritual; they strive to gain them for him; 
and enjoy returning to their own hearts, because therein they 
find good present thoughts, the reminiscences of past good and 
the hope of future goods. This causes enjoyment and they 
will not allow any dissension in themselves, because they love 
themselves wholly. Not so the wicked: they do not care for 
the integrity of the interior man, nor are they drawn to his 





(18) Summa I, II, q. 77, a. 1: ‘‘For the corruptible body, says the Book of Wisdom, is a 
load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that musseth up many 
things’ (9, 15). And ‘‘the bewitching of vanity obscureth good things and the wandering 
of concupiscence overturneth the innocent mind”’ (4, 12). ‘‘As long as reason remains free 
and not enslaved by the passion the movement of the will which remains does not necessarily 
tend to the object to which passion would sway” (Summa I, II, q. 10, a. 1). 


SMoral Theology | 33 





spiritual goods; nor do they strive to attain them; nor do they 
enjoy living with themselves, by returning to themselves, for 
there they find evils, past, present and future, which they 
abhor; nor are they in agreement with themselves, because of 
the remorse of conscience which, according to the Psalmist, 
says to them: ‘I will accuse them and stand before their 
faces.’ And thus the wicked prove that they love bane 
according to the corruption which is of the external man.”’ 
Such inordinate self-love is the source of many sins. 

The final source of sin lies in the pride of our own excellence. 
The sinner acting freely and voluntarily, knows full well that 
his act is against the law of God. Even while he is placing his 
act, conscience is accusing and reproaching his disobedience. 
The spark of truth radiating in him from the effulgence of the 
eternal truth makes him see that the act does not tend to the 
true good, and the last ember of the dying love for this law, 
enkindled by the participated eternal holiness, would again 
inflame for this law, but yet he chooses the disobedience and 
even forces the practical reason to admit that it is better to 
follow his own bent than to submit to reason, regulated by 
divine law. His self-sufficiency and inordinate self-love 
prompt him to admit no other law or command than his own 
self-shaped rule and bent. “Just as,’ says St. Thomas, 
“charity by the diffusion of its command is common to all 
virtues and therefore is called the form and mother of all 
virtues .... thus, too, pride by the diffusion of its command 
is the common sin of all, wherefore it is called the root and 
queen of all vices...... If one look to the effect one will find it 
in every sin, for the effect of pride is to refuse to be subject to 
the rule of a superior.” 1° 

From these considerations we gather: (1) If we could see 
God by a direct intuition, we would see that our happiness is 
so intimately bound up with the observance of the natural 


(14) Summa I, IT, 
(15) De Malo, q. wil : 2. ie ibidem ad 11, 12, 18, 16, et 11 Sent. dist. XLII, q. 1, a. 3, q. 
ll,a.3adl 


34 Fundamental 








order, that these two things, our happiness and the observance 
of the law, are inseparable. The opposite choice entails a 
rejection of the true good and on the part of the agent, finis 
operantis, and implicitly, a renunciation of the ultimate end 
and of God. He who forces his practical judgment to thus 
pervert the order of nature, errs, is imprudent in his judgment, 
is malicious of will, and practically deserts the one way which 
leads to eternal life. 

(2) From this it follows that the sinner is guilty unto 
punishment: ‘‘Where there is an order ordained unto an end, 
it is necessary that this order lead to the end, and contrariwise, 
receding from the order, excludes the obtaining of the end. 
For those things which derive from the end are necessary be- 
cause of the end, so that they are necessary if the end is neces- 
sary, and likewise if they are present, without impediment, 
the end must be obtained. But God has made an order for 
the acts of men, relative to the ultimate end. Wherefore it 
is necessary if the order is rightly placed that those who walk 
according to this order be rewarded and that those who recede 
from this order be excluded from the end of the good, 1.e., 
they should be punished.:* This exclusion must be for all 
eternity. ‘“‘Man, by virtuous acts, in which the intention of 
the end is principally inherent, obtains his ultimate end, which 
is happiness. But if he acts against virtue, turning away 
from the ultimate end, it is proper that he should be deprived 
of his ultimate end.”’:7 Sin therefore, in as much as it Is per se 
voluntary, is a deed, saying or appetence against the law of 
God, or as it is popularly expressed, a thought, word or deed 
against the law of God. (The word “thought” here stands 
for any merely internal act.) 

Sin, in as far as it is bad, is a turning away from God, the 
ultimate end, by a voluntary turning to a commutable good. 

‘‘Wherefore,”’ says St. Thomas, “‘a venial sin is not against 
(contra legem) but is beside (praeter legem) the law.”’ Venial 





(16) Contra Gentiles III, c. 143. (17) Ibid. 





SHMoral Theology | 35 





sin is predicated (analogice), according to an imperfect reason, 
relative to mortal sin, as accidents are predicated as being 
relative to substance in an imperfect reason of being. It is 
not against the law, because he who sins venially does not do 
what the law forbids, nor does he omit what the law prescribes 
by precept, but he acts beside the law, because he does not 
observe the mode of reason which the law intends. 18 

Yet God hates venial sin because this mode of reason is 
repugnant to His infinite goodness, and for the same reason 
venial sin excludes from the vision of God as long as it remains. 


ARTICLE V 
Moral Indifference and the Perfection of Free Choice 


Moral indifference, by which is here meant the potency to 
elect that which is morally wrong, i.e., to commit sin, is an 
imperfection not a perfection of the faculties which come into 
play for a free choice. 

Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Libertas, after having established 
that free choice is an act of reason and of the will, continues: 
“Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possi- 
ble, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something 
which is not really good, and that the will should choose 
accordingly. For, as the possibility of error and actual error 
are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the 
pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof 
of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, 
implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because 
of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything 





(18) Summa I, II, q. 87, a. 1, ad 1. 


On the discussion whether positive imperfections, namely, omissions of acts to place 
which a person is particularly invited or of acts, all circumstances being duly weighed which 
are undoubtedly better, are venial sins. (See Hugueny, O.P., Revue du Clerge Francais, t. 53, 
pp. 641 sqq.) Who defends that such imperfections are Vvenial sins; Garrigoue-Lag-ange, 
La vie spirituelle ascetique et mystique (St. Maximin-Var., Sept., 1923, pp. 583-592.) Who 
defends they are not venial sins, Vermeersch concludes: This much is certain men generally 
are in no wise obliged, to elect what is better it is sufficient to direct one’s acts according to the 
norm of morality (Theol. Mor., vol., I, p. 424). 


36 Fundamental 


contrary thereto, than it abuses its freedom of choice and 
corrupts its very essence. Thus it is that the infinitely perfect 
God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of 
His intellect and of His essential goodness, nevertheless cannot 
choose evil: neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the 
beatific vision.” ! 

St. Thomas proves how this imperfection affects both the 
reason and the will—the two faculties which preside over 
freedom of choice and from whose mutual and intimate union 
the act of free choice springs. “Free will,’’ he says, “in its 
choice of means to an end is disposed just as the intellect is to 
conclusions. Now it is evident that it belongs to the intellect 
to be able to proceed to different conclusions, according to 
given principles; but for it to proceed to some conclusions by 
passing out of the order of the principles, comes of its own 
defect. Hence it belongs to the perfection of its liberty for 
the free will to be able to choose between opposite things, 
keeping the order of the end in view; but it comes of the defect 
of liberty for it to choose anything by turning away from the 
order of the end; and this is to sin. Hence there is greater 
liberty of will in the angels, who cannot sin, than there is in 
ourselves, who can sin.’’2 Wherefore in as far as sin implies 
an aversion from the ultimate end, both the intellect and the 
will choosing to commit sin denature themselves, stripping 
themselves, as it were, of their essential perfection, namely, to 
be guided by and to follow their natural principles. That 
the intellect by reasoning should be able to split up its natural 
light into its various rays and colors and thus find new truths 
deduced truly from its first principles, is a perfection, but that 
it should dim or totally darken the lhght of these its first 
principles, is a defect; thus, too, that the will by its act of 
choice should endeavor to exploit the richness of good which 
lies buried in its ultimate end, is a perfection, that it should 





(1) Libertas, op. cit., p. 138. 
(2)i liq7625 82 S,7ado,.et lols Gail. ae oe 








Sloral Theology 37 














follow a false light and dig in a false direction, where good 
cannot be found, is a defect. * 

To sinners the words of Jeremias, the prophet, are applied: 
““My people have done two evils. ‘They have forsaken me, the 
fountain source of living water, and have digged to themselves 
cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water’ (2, 18). 
This second element of sin, namely, seeking the ultimate end in 
a.created good, is a like perversion of the freedom of choice. 
“Since choice is either a judgment about things to be done or 
follows upon such a judgment, it can only be in things which 
are subject to our judgment. Now judgment of things to 
be done is based on the end just as judgment on conclusions is 
based on principles. But we do not judge of first principles 
by examining them, we assent to them naturally and judge all 
other things by them, thus, too, in appetible things we do not 
judge the ultimate end by a judgment of discussion or exami- 
nation but we naturally approve of it. Hence there can be no 
choice of the ultimate end; there can be only a striving for it.”’ 4 
Thus the sinner arrogates to himself a judgment and a choice 
which nature does not and cannot allow. 

The sinner attempting to satisfy his striving for the good 
chooses the apparent for the real. He is digging “broken 
cisterns which can hold no water’’. Good is the fullness of 
being and in consequence the highest reality. ‘‘Knowledge is 
of things as they exist in the knower but the will is directed 
to things as they exist in themselves.’’*> Wherefore to force 
the will to satisfy its craving with a phantom good perverts its 
very nature. “‘Sin,’’ says the Angelic Doctor, “‘coming under 
the free choice does not destroy essentials, otherwise free choice 
would not remain, but by sin a something is added, namely, a 
joining, as it were, of free choice with a perverse end which it 
would effect for it.” * 


(3) ‘‘As the intellect is to reason so is the will to the power of free choice,”’ I-II, q. i, a. 2. 
(4) Quaest. disp. de verit., 24, a. 1, ad 20. 

Ho )sed-i9, a, 3, ad.6: 
(6) Q. disp. de verit., 24, a. 10, ad 14. 


38 Fundamental 


Creatures should be means to the end; the sinner makes 
them the end itself, and herein, says St. Augustine, “‘All human 
perverseness lies, using what we should enjoy and enjoying what 
we should use.”’? The natural tendency to the ultimate end 
gives man the means to enjoy the good; but the sinner perverts 
the order: he uses the ultimate good as a means and enjoys the 
created good, which nature has given him as a means in this 
striving, as if it were the end of his longing. 

Thus man, when he freely chooses to sin, steps beyond the 
limits which the very nature of freedom has set for him and 
thus abuses instead of uses and perverts instead of perfects it. 
The blessed in heaven enjoying the beatific vision possess and 
enjoy the good in all the fullness of its being; they cannot err 
as to what is good, they cannot chase after a phantom good, 
they cannot try to content themselves with the means as if it 
were the end and are thus in the fullness and perfection of their 
freedom. 


ARTICLE VI 
Moral Insanity 


The human will being, just as is the intellect, of a spiritual 
nature, no sense infirmity or affection can directly destroy 
or lessen the will power in itself. There can be no soul sickness 
in this sense. But just as bodily sickness, derangement of 
the external or internal sense organs can and do cause false 
ideas, judgments, and reasonings both transiently and per- 
manently and thus cause intellectual insanity, like derange- 
ments might cause moral insanity. It is claimed, and with a 
show of proof, that there are persons whose intellectual powers 
are otherwise normal, who have a well developed theoretical 
knowledge of right and wrong, who can readily enumerate 
even the finer distinctions of morality, but who in their actions 
show that they have no practical moral sense. Their theoretic 


(7) S. Aug. lib. 88, qq. 80, quoted I-II, q. 71, a.-6, obj. 3. 


Moral Theology 39 


knowledge of moral obligation seems to awaken no sense of 
responsibility, call forth no reaction of the will, and furnish 
no motive for the practical exercise of morality. 

The question is not one of mere depravity arising from the 
vehemence of unchecked passion or inveterate vice, nor yet of 
sickness of the sense organs which affect sense perception, 
memory or phantasy. All of these are accounted for in the 
interplay of the senses and the intellect and, of course, enter 
largely into the subjective guilt or innocence of the agent 
(formal sin). 

“The intellect of necessity,’ says St. Thomas, “receives 
from the lower apprehending powers, wherefore if the imagina- 
tive or cogitative or memorative power is disturbed, of necessity 
the action of the intellect is disturbed. But the will need not 
of necessity follow the inclination of the inferior appetite. 
For though the irascible and concupiscible passions have a 

certain power to incline the will, none the less it remains in 
the power of the will to accept or refuse the passions.”’! ‘“The 
intellect in its present state cannot function unless it converts 
itself to the phantasms, the will can will something using the 
_ judgment of reason and not following the passion of the sensi- 
tive appetite.’”’2 This explains how, unless temptation or 
concupiscence overcome the use of reason, man can resist. 
Wherefore in order to account for moral insanity we must find 
a derangement or disease of a sense organ which destroys the 
practico-practical judgment of the intellect. Those who admit 
with the Thomists against the Scotists: that the intellect 
cannot form direct judgment of particulars and claim that the 
intellect is of necessity dependent for such judgment on a fourth 
internal sense with comparative powers, find the derangement 
or defect in what is called the cogitative power. This power, 
they say, is somewhat akin to the instinct, vis aestimativa, of 
the brute. They place it on the borderline between the 


(1) I, q. 115, a. 4. 
(2), data dla. 2'et fi 
(3) Donat, S.J., Psychologia, Innsbruck, 1923, n. 243 et 251. 


40 Fundamental 





sensuous and the intellectual, making it as it were, a distention 
of the intellect and of reason into the sensuous. ‘ 

St. Thomas speaks of this power: ‘The animal needs to 
seek or to avoid certain things, not only because they are 
pleasing or otherwise to the senses but also on account of 
other advantages, uses or disadvantages, just as the sheep 
runs away from the wolf not on account of its color or shape, 
but as a natural enemy; and again, as a bird when it gathers 
together straws not because they are pleasant to the sense, but 
because they are useful for building its nests. Animals there- 
fore need to perceive such intentions which the exterior sense 
does not perceive.” ‘The power which in other animals is 
called the natural estimative, in man is called the cogitative, 
which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions 
(particulars as against universals). Wherefore it is called the 
particular reason... . for it compares individual intentions 
just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions.” > 
In explanation of this the following passages of St. Thomas 
can be quoted: ‘“The mind concerns itself about individuals 
per accidens, in as far as it is distended toward the sense powers 
which deal with the individual.’”’* ‘‘The right estimate about 
a particular end is called both understanding in so far as its 
object is a principle, and sense in so far as its object is a particu- 
lar. This is what the philosopher means when he says (Ethies 
V1) of such things we need to have the sense, and this is under- 
standing. But this is to be understood as referring, not to 
the particular sense whereby we know proper sensibles, but 
to the interior sense whereby we judge of a particular.” ? 
“This power which the philosophers call the cogitative is on 
the border line between the sensitive and the intellective, 
where the sensitive touches upon the intellective. It pertains 
to the sensitive because it considers particular forms, to the 





(4) 1. cit., nos. 168, 169, 170. 
(byeLso.c6S, a4: 

(6) Quaest. disp. de verit., 10, a. 5. 
(7) Thali. 49 7as2rad. 3: 


HMoral Theslogy | 41 








intellective because it compares.’ Now the practico-practical 
reason which gives the final verdict about a thing to be done 
at this moment, must of necessity depend on this understanding 
and evaluation of the particular and therefore on the cogitative. 
And since the will elects in accordance with this dictate of the 
practico-practical reason it, too, thus depends on the cogitative. 
For this same reason St. Thomas makes the cogitative play a 
large role in the exercise of the virtue of prudence. ‘The 
reasoning of prudence must proceed from a twofold understand- 
ing. The one is cognizant of universals, and this belongs to 
the understanding, and is an intellectual virtue. The other 
understanding which is a part of prudence, is a right estimate 
of the particular end.”’» He explains that shrewdness, which 
is ‘an easy and rapid conjecture in finding the middle term’’, '° 
namely the particular or individual end, and circumspection 
and caution are large factors in the exercise of this virtue, and 
_ since they deal with particulars, of necessity depend largely 
on the cogitative. Accepting this theory, it is readily under- 
stood how a derangement or disease of the cogitative affects 
the will by blunting or even destroying what is called the moral 
sense, or moral feeling, or moral emotion. The cogitative in 
as far as it belongs to the sensitive, depends on the health of 
the bodily organ or organs it uses, which like all other organs 
can be affected by sickness. St. Thomas places this organ in 
the middle of the head. Moderns differ greatly in their opinion 
as to which organ is the seat of this estimating and comparing 
power. 

This being the case we can understand how, though the 
particular sense may fittingly announce the phenomena, the 
phantasy may fittingly form the sense image and yet the 
cogitative will not react fittingly. We, too, can understand 
how the speculative reason may still be sound in the judgment 
of the universal and yet the practical reason because of its 


(8) In Sent. III d. 23, q. 2, a. 2 sol., 1 ad 3. 
(9) II-II, q. 49, a. 2, ad 1. 
(10) II-II, q. 49, a. 4, 7, 8 





42 Fundamental 











enchainment with an unsound cogitative is helpless in forming 
a concrete operative judgment. :! 

It would be a fatal mistake and an exaggeration to deduce 
from these considerations that the cogitative gives the final 
verdict on moral acts to be placed. The real practical 
intellective reason does this. But just as the speculative 
reason, in the earthly life of persons, must of necessity work 
with and upon the phantasm supplied by the senses for its 
knowledge and judgment of the universal, so, too, the practical 
reason depends for its final reflex judgment of individual 
intentions on the material supplied by the cogitative. And 
under the spell of a blunted diseased cogitative the will, though 
entitatively free in the exercise of its acts, is hampered. 

This sense perception of moral values is awakened in the 
child long before the reason becomes active and explains how 
children of tender age know right from wrong in concrete cases 
at times with astounding accuracy. From this the pedagogical 
value of the cogitative in the early formation of the affections 
is apparent. Sincere parents and teachers will be quick to 
take advantage of it. The first germs of the so called child 
virtues, namely, the sense of shame and self-respect lie in the 
cogitative. Cultivating these, a sense-sentiment of respect for 
parents, teachers, play and classmates can be cultivated. By 
arousing self-respect and esteem, habits of application, behavior 
and unselfishness can be formed. However in doing this 
every endeavor, too, should be made to gradually lift these 
sense-habits to the higher plane of intellectual and supernatural 
virtues. For though the supernatural presupposes and is built 
up on the natural there is no real virtue in the concrete unless 
it be vitalized by the supernatural. Just as in infant age the 
germs of sense-valuation and intellectual judgment are gradual- 
ly coming to bloom, so too the supernatural in these children 
by the grace of God which is in and with them is coming to 
fruition. 








(41) For a fuller discussion of this problem see: Die Menschliche Willens-Freiheit von 
Dr. Karl Schmidt, O.S.B., Engelberg, Switzerland, 1925, pp. 156-163 and 194-203. 


SHloral Theology | 43 








CHAPTER TWO 


The Virtues 


I. Our English word, virtue, is derived from the Latin 
word, virtus (vir), denoting, manly goodness, manhood and, 
then in a further sense derived from this, a certain disposition 
and quality befitting man as a rational being. Such a quality 
perfects either the cognitive or the appetitive faculties; and thus 
a division is made into intellectual and moral virtues. Strictly 
speaking, manly goodness and, hence, virtue can only be 
predicated of the moral virtues: the former would more properly 
be called habits. Aristotle and St. Thomas enumerate five 
such intellectual habits. 


1. Understanding: a quality of mind which gives an ex- 
-pertness to apprehend clearly and fix firmly the principles on 
which all our thought processes depend; from which thought 
begins, and around which thought revolves, they being the 
starting point and radiating center of all thought. 

2. Science, by which the mind is made expert to see the 
inner relations of things, deducing one truth from the other, 
and linking the discovered truths with one another especially 
along the lines of causal relation. 

3. Wisdom: the quality of mind disposing to bring all 
things back to the first truth and principle and final end of all 
being, namely, to God. 

4, Art: the general knack and bent of arranging and 
grouping the outward expression of the inward thought pro- 
cesses. 

5. Prudence, which, however, since it is the practical 
reason of right conduct, belongs rather to the moral virtues 
(see below). 





44 Fundamental 


II. ‘The merely intellectual habits denote good, but with a 
qualification and restriction; namely, good in as far as it is 
truth. Of course, truth makes us more like unto God, brings 
us nearer to Him, and thus perfects our nature, making it more 
like unto God; moreover a greater knowledge influences our 
moral life, but yet it does not perfect our moral being. An 
eminent philosopher might possess all the intellectual habits, 
barring prudence, and yet lead a very immoral life. True 
manly goodness, true manhood implies morality, wherefore the 
term, virtue, strictly such, is applicable to the moral virtues 
only. 

III. Virtue is defined by Lactantius: ‘To do good and 
avoid evil.’?! However, the term, virtue, implies a permanent 
disposition, not merely a transient act; and, as such, is defined: 
A habit of doing good. A habit is a permanent disposition to 
act in a certain definite manner. It perfects or impairs the 
faculty in which it resides either, entitatively, as ill health im- 
pairs the vigor of the body, or operatively, as prudence perfects 
the practical intellect. The moral virtues perfect man opera- 
tively. 

Thus we arrive at a more complete definition of virtue: 
Virtue is an operative habit to do good and to avoid evil. 
Good here means the moral good, conformity to right reason, 
which, in the ultimate analysis, means to the ‘‘reason of God’’. 
This reason of God is not a mere fiat of His will, but is the 
effluence of God’s will, governed by His wisdom and benevo- 
lence. An act is good, therefore, if it conforms to that stand- 
ard of morality which the order of things in the world demands. 
Good or bad is imputable to human acts only, namely, acts 
either elicited or commanded by the will of its own free choice. 
A virtue is therefore an operative habit of placing good human 
acts. 

The definition, which St. Thomas borrowed from St. 
Augustine, in reality does not differ from this. Virtue, he says, 


(1) De Divin. Inst., 1. 6, ec. 5 (M. 6, 649). 





Moral Theology 45 


is a good quality or a habit of the mind, by which man lives 
-rightly, which no one uses evilly, and which God operates in 
us without us.2 To posit good human acts means to live 
rightly; to place evil human acts means to forsake virtue. 
The clause, ‘‘which God operates in us without us,”’ refers to 
the supernatural virtues. However, since all men are elevated 
to the supernatural state and this is the destiny of all, the 
supernatural virtues are the only really good habits (see below). 


IV. (a) Habit is different from power. Virtue pre- 
supposes the power to act. It is not the power of doing good, 
for even the wicked have such power; if it were otherwise the 
wicked could not commit formal sin. 

(b) Nor is virtue the act itself; for, otherwise, nobody 
could have a virtue except at the very time he acts, whilst, in 
fact, man may have a virtue, though he never places an act 
of that virtue. For instance, a hermit in the desert may have 
the virtue of justice, though he neither has nor will have an 
occasion to posit an act of justice. 

(c) Virtue differs from the affections and _ passions. 
Affections are the stirrings of the rational appetite; passions 
are the stirrings of the sensuous appetite. Virtues are not the 
stirring either of the rational or of the sensuous appetite. They 
are the forces which excite such stirrings. 

The passions and the affections are morally neither good 
nor bad in themselves; but virtue is always good.? Reason 
holds the passions and affections to the moral good; hence, 
the stirrings have their beginnings in the appetite and their 
terminus in the reason, whilst reason stirs up the virtues which 
in turn stir up either the passions or the affections, and thus 
they have their beginning in the reason and their terminus in 
the appetite. 

(d) The common opinion, taught in the schools of the 
Church today, holds that there is a difference between the 





(2) Summa, QLYV, art. 4. 
(3) Summa, 1.2, q. 49, art. 1. 


46 Fundamental 








gifts of the Holy Ghost and the infused virtues. In name, 
purpose and object to which they tend they are the same. . 
The difference lies in the motive power which stirs them up. 
The virtues are stirred up by reason elevated to the supernatural 
state and illuminated by faith; the gifts of the Holy Ghost 
(which of course are different from the charismata, which are 
in the wicked as in the just,) are stirred into action by a special 
direct movement of the Holy Ghost. They prompt the virtues 
to act more quickly by an almost instinctive movement, which, 
however, is still under command of the free choice of the will. 


V. Since all moral acts are human acts and all human acts 
are either elicited or commanded by the will, it follows that 
the subject, wherein virtues reside, must be principally the 
will. They can reside in the other faculties only in as far as 
these faculties are under the command of the will. True, 
sometimes virtue and good are predicated of acts of the intellect 
considered without reference to the will; but, when this is done, 
it is with a reservation or a qualification. ‘Thus we say that 
the judgment is good in the sense that it is true; but we do not 
say that true judgment makes a man morally good or virtuous. 
Wherefore the habit of good judgment is not simply good but 
good with a reservation and a qualification. 

With all the more reason virtues cannot reside in the sen- 
suous faculties, except in as far as they are controlled by the 
will. Thus the subject wherein virtue resides is either (1) 
the will, or (2) the speculative intellect in as far as it can be 
moved to truth by the free will, or (3) the practical intellect 
in as far as the acts to be placed are rightly commanded by the 
will, or (4) the sensuous appetites in as far.as the irascible and 
concupiscible are ruled by the rational will. + 

VI. In the Book of Genesis we read: ‘“‘And God created 
man to His own image; to the image of God He created him.” + 
This image and likeness consists especially in this: The soul 


(4) Cf. Pesch, Prae.-Dog. De Virtutibus Infusis, vol. 8, Tract 1, n. 6. 
(5) Gen. i, 27. 


SMoral Theology 47 





of man is, like God, a spirit endowed with intellect and will and 
destined to live on forever. Man, by his own exertion, should 
heighten this image of God, by using his intellect to learn 
more of God, and by training his will to do more perfectly 
God’s will. Thus, in this better knowledge of God and in this 
better fulfillment of God’s will, man would make himself more 
like unto God. ‘This is what is called the natural state of man 
and his natural destiny. Wishing to make man even more 
like unto Himself—to make him “but a little lower than the 
angels .... to crown him with glory and honor’’.* God lifted 
man up to the supernatural state. In this state man reflects 
more resplendently God’s perfections, and thus becomes more 
and more the likeness and image of God. 

This lifting up God does by infusing into the soul of man a 
supernatural habit, by which man becomes ‘“‘a new creature’, 7 
“a, partaker of the divine nature,” * so that, the darkness of 
sin having been expelled, man becomes a “‘light in the Lord’’, 

walking as “‘a child of light’’ “in all goodness and justice and 
truth’’, » and is fit “for the kingdom prepared from the founda- 
tion of the world’’. 1° 


VII. (a) This habit is called sanctifying grace. Sancti- 
fying grace does not add a new faculty to our soul, but trans- 
forms the faculties to know and to will that are in us. It 
is not a momentary, passing transformation, but a permanent 
inherent form. It is called a habit, but is not a mere disposi- 
tion; it is a new form. Christ “emptied Himself, taking the 
form of the servant’, 11 “that we may be found in His form’’, 2 
Thus, as He was with us a man among men, we may become, 
in as far as our condition of creature allows, as God with God. 

(b) Sanctifying grace is not a virtue. It holds the same 
place in the supernatural as nature does in the natural order. 
The supernatural does not supplant; it presupposes nature, 
yet it is not merely a perfecting but a lifting up of nature to a 





(6) Psalm viii, 6. (Gals vi, 16. (8) II. Peter i, 4. 
(9) Eph. v, 8-9 (10) Matt. xxv, 34. CEE Rieti aks 
(12) rote of Mass of Christmas. 


48 Fundamental 








higher plane. It gives the intellect not merely a clearer but a 
higher and broader vision; it does not draw the will to the good 
merely more intensely, but draws it on to a higher and a greater 
good. 

(c) The good in the natural and supernatural order, to 
which the will is drawn, is God, the supreme good; but the 
supernatural makes this good better known, and makes it more 
desirable in itself. To be with God is the desire of men. In 
the supernatural state this desire is to be with Him in a union 
more intimate than nature can give—namely, to know Him 
as we are known, to see Him face to face, and, thus seeing and 
knowing Him, to be with Him, not merely as a creature with 
the creator, or as a servant with the master, but as friend with 
friend and as children with the father. 

Sanctifying grace thus holds the same place in the super- 
natural, which nature holds in the natural order. God gave 
man’s nature certain faculties that it may function; with this 
new form God gives special gifts and aids that nature and the 
faculties of nature transformed can place the acts of this higher 
life. Among these are the supernatural virtues, which we - 
can thus define as permanent dispositions to place human acts 
morally good, and fit to attain the supernatural end. 


VIII. The moral virtues are put into action differently by 
the believer and by the unbeliever; by the just and the unjust. 
The first difference lies in the power which places the act. 
The one is left to his natural resources; while the other acts 
under the inspiration and help of the supernatural grace given 
him by God. Secondly, the one seeks the good which man 
perceives by the light of reason which points out to him that 
standard of morality, which reason learns by the study of the 
present order of things as they are in the present world. The 
good to be obtained is only that happiness which the world 
can give man, the satisfaction of knowing that he is right, a 
feeling that he is acting in a rational manner becoming his 
dignity asman. The other, by the glow of charity which is in 


Moral Theology 49 





him and by the light of faith, sees a higher, a supernatural good, 
which draws him on to act. This higher and supernatural 
good is God Himself, known not only from the things which 
are, but known more fully and evidently from His positive 
revelation. The impelling force again is not merely the love 
of good, but the love of God from Whom all good things come 
and the Author Who has established the supernatural order 
by the absolute free choice of His positive will. This force 
endures morally in the habit of charity which is in the agent 
acting. There is then for the just a higher vision and higher 
impelling force and an object known as higher and more 
desirable. Faith gives the vision; charity, the impelling force. 
Thus the friend of God, when positing an act, refers the act 
together with himself to this supernatural end. Or at least 
the motivation of the act, in an implicit and confused manner, 
is faith, understanding hereby that, in the final analysis, the 
reason why the act is placed is because it is acceptable to God, 
the supernatural good, and that it is endowed with that justice 
which He demands in the supernatural order. 

IX. But no moral virtue is supernatural, except in as far 
as it regards the right use of means to the supernatural end. 
Thus military prudence, in general, is not a supernatural 
virtue—the means are chosen for a merely natural purpose. ': 

From this it will be understood how the Fathers of the 
Church frequently stigmatized the virtues of the unbelievers as 
vices. All men are ordained by God to the supernatural state, 
and must therefore desire and attain God not merely as the 
natural but the supernatural good. The acts of the unbeliever’s 
virtues fall short of this; and, hence, are in that sense vices. 

However, nothing is wanting in them which is required by 
philosophical consideration for the essence of virtue. The 
formal supernatural object and the infused habit corresponding 
to this object alone are wanting. |‘ 


(18) Cf. Vermeersch, De Just., c. 1, n. 19. 
(14) Pesch, Prael. Dog., Tract 1-13. 


50 Fundamental 





X. All the supernatural virtues are moral virtues, since 
they place good human acts, or, in other words, lead to the true 
final end of man’s whole life. ‘“‘An end,” says Aristotle, ‘‘is 
something desirable of itself and not for something else.” 
This, however, does not mean finality; thus, in a race, to reach 
the first mile post is an end, but the final end is the last post— 
the first end is in a certain sense a means to the final end. Now 
virtue may lead to God as its direct object; its end is then the 
final end, for that reason it is given a nobler name, being called 
a theological virtue. Or the first end of a virtue may be some- 
thing desirable in itself, but yet dispositive as a means to the 
final end. Thus, the end of the virtue of justice is to give to 
each one his due as the standard of morality demands. This 
is desirable in itself, but is dispositive to a higher end, namely, 
this standard is fixed by God and to attain it is pleasing to 
Him, and, as such, is a means of coming to Him. For this 
reason these latter virtues are called simply the moral virtues. 

The theological virtues tend to ordain human acts directly 
to the supernatural end of man, to God Himself; the moral 
virtues ordain such acts to the means which finally lead to 
God. 15 

In moral questions, matter and form are spoken of only by 
analogy. In this analogy the material object to which a 
virtue tends is the good to which its acts go out; the formal 
object is the moral good at which the act aims. Thus, the ma- 
terial object of justice is the rights of others; the formal object 
is the moral good that lies in this, to give each man his due. 
The formal object of the supernatural virtue of justice is this: 
It is good to give each one his due, because this is pleasing to 
God, and He will reward with eternal life. 

XI. There are three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and 
Charity. God is considered as being Truth itself, and, as such, 
is the object of faith; or He is considered as our Supreme 
Good, and, as such, is the object of hope; or He is considered 


(15) Summa, 1 2, q. 62, art. 2. 





Moral Theology 51 











simply as the Supreme Good, and, as such, is the object of 
charity. 

The moral virtues are classified under the heading, Cardinal 
Virtues, which are four: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and 
Temperance. oa 

Man must judge whether the object is morally good; this 
is done by prudence. Man must observe the mean in reaching 
out for the created goods; this is done by temperance. Then 
he must overcome those difficulties which sway him from going 
out after the real good, which is done by fortitude; and, lastly, 
in seeking his own he must not trespass on the rights of others; 
this is done by justice.1* This division is scriptural: “If a 
man love justice (the sum total of morality), her labors have 
great virtues, for she teacheth temperance and prudence and 
justice and fortitude, which are such things as men can have 
nothing more profitable in life.”’ 

St. Ambrose seems to have been the first to call these the 
cardinal virtues. ‘‘We know,” he says, ‘“‘that there are four 
cardinal virtues—temperance, justice, prudence, fortitude.’ 18 


XII. Cardinal is used in the sense (a) of denoting the four 
qualities which must be found in every virtue, prudent, just, 
firm and temperate; (b) to denote a special virtue in which one 
of these four attributes, common to all, shines forth in a special 
manner, namely, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, 
and thus these four virtues become heads, as it were, under 
which the others are ranged. 

However, as this hinging springs from the matter around 
which these special virtues operate, it by no means follows 
that they are better or greater than the virtues ranged under 
them. Thus religion is put under justice; yet religion is greater 
in dignity than justice. '° 

Further, since this is a mere logical arrangement, because a 
virtue is placed under one of these four, it does not necessarily 


17 





(16)"summa,, 2, q..60; art: 2:*q. 61, "art. 2; (17) Wisdom viii, 7. 
(18) (Mi. P. 15, 1653.) (LO )}eSUIniIna ele. Ole AT use oa 


52 Fundamental 


imply that it is of the same faculty or that it is more intimately 
connected with this than with another virtue. Thus, for 
instance, humility is ranged under temperance which is of the 
concupiscible and sensuous appetite, whilst humility belongs 
to the will. 2° 

XIII. These are called the cardinal among the moral 
virtues, but not in comparison with the theological, which are 
by far greater. The latter are not called cardinal, because in 
this term there is always an underlying meaning of turning 
which is excluded in the theological virtues. The appetite of 
man rests in the end of his being to which these tend; and, 
therefore, these are compared not to cardinal (the hinge) but 
to the foundation and root, as in the saying of St. Paul, “That 
Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts, that being rooted 
and founded in charity you may be able to comprehend.... to 
know also the charity of Christ... . that you may be filled 
unto all the fullness of God.” 2 

For a similar reason wisdom is not enumerated among the 
cardinal virtues. The moral virtues turn upon human things; 
wisdom contemplates the divine. Contemplation cannot be 
compared to the turning on a hinge, for it is not like a gate by 
which one enters, but rather moral action is the gate by which 
one enters unto wisdom. Prudence among the moral virtues 
approaches closest to wisdom, yet with a difference: “‘Wisdom 
contemplates the divine; prudence concerns itself with the 
human things which lead to the wisdom of divine things. 
Prudence shows men how to come to wisdom; it is the inter- 
mediary, the minister of wisdom; it introduces and shows 
the way as porter to the king.”’ 
XIV. Experience teaches us that virtues can be acquired 
by repeated acts. Revelation teaches us that God pours into 
the soul of the just certain virtues; hence the division into 
acquired and infused virtues. But, since the manner in which 


2 2 





(20) Vermeersch, De Just., cap. 1, 13. (21) Eph. iii, 17, 18, 19. 
(22) Summa, 1, 2, q. 6, a. 5, ad 1. 


Horal Theology SS 








the infused virtues act, the means they use and the end to 
which they tend are over and beyond the natural, they are not 
a perfecting of natural powers, which are only dispositive to 
the supernatural, but can never attain it. On the other hand, 
since the infused virtues presuppose the power which they 
inform, they are not a new power superadded, but are habits 
disposing unto supernatural acts. From this it is evident 
that even the moral supernatural virtues cannot be acquired 
by repeated natural acts. 

Scotus and his followers hold that the supernatural end, 
which the acquired virtues cannot have in their own species, 
comes to them from the inclination of charity, and that the 
infused virtue of faith gives the manner and the means of 
acting; and, consequently, that they need not necessarily be 
infused.22 To this argument the Thomists answer: It could 
be thus, but yet, unless there be moral virtues infused, the 
supernatural order is not perfect in all its parts. The irascible 
-and concupiscible appetites, in as far as they are subjects of 
moral virtues, would not be elevated to the supernatural. 

Scripture and tradition seem to favor the opinion that the 
the moral virtues are infused with sanctifying grace. St. Paul 
tells Timothy: “‘God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of 
power (fortitude) and of love and of sobriety’”’ (temperance). 2 4 
Now, since the spirit of love is the infused virtue, it would seem 
justifiable to conclude the spirit of fortitude and temperance 
are likewise the infused virtues. 

St. Augustine, speaking of the cardinal virtues, says: 
“These virtues are given to us in this valley of tears by the 
grace of God.”’ In another passage he says: “Piety, chastity 
and sobriety and the whole army of virtues are in the just.’’ ‘“‘For, 
as the commander leads his army whither and where he chooses, 
thus the Lord Jesus Christ, beginning to inhabit the interior 
man, uses these virtues as His ministers.” ? 5 








(23) Seotus, D. 3 d. 36, q. 1, n. 28 (Lect. de istis). (2A Nel Dom barrow cats 
(25) Ps. 88, 11, 37. 





54 Fundamental 


The opinion, commonly taught in the schools of the Church, 
holds that God infuses the moral virtues in the soul of the just 
together with sanctifying grace, and that an increase of sanctify- 
ing grace or merit increases them in intensity but not in prompt- 
ness or facility to act. 

The Roman catechism favors this opinion, when it says: 
“To this (sanctifying grace) is added the noblest train of all 
the virtues which are divinely infused into the soul with 
erace.”’ 26 

XV. Promptness and facility come by repeated acts. 
These repeated acts do not add a new habit; they confirm the 
previous existing habit which becomes more ready and more 
prompt to act. This facility and promptness can remain, 
even though the supernatural habit is lost by mortal sin. 
Experience proves this: Man acquires a greater facility and 
promptness to place virtuous acts in proportion to the frequency 
in which they are placed. From the negative side, experience 
proves that, when the sinner is converted, he still finds great 
difficulty in overcoming the vicious habits of his former life, 
whilst his good habits, acquired previously, act promptly and - 
easily. 

XVI. All the infused virtues, except faith and hope, are 
lost by mortal sin, though the acquired natural facility remains. 
Faith and hope are lost only by sins directly against these 
virtues. 

When sanctifying grace is regained by penance, the infused 
virtues are restored. Their intensity follows the intensity of 
the restored sanctifying grace. St. Thomas explains the reason 
for this: ‘‘Forms which can receive a plus or a minus are 
increased or decreased according to the diverse disposition of 
the subject .... wherefore in the measure in which the move- 
ment of the free will is increased in penance, grace is given to 
the penitent.” 27 





(26) Cat. Rom. 2, 2, q. 50. 
(27) Summa, 38, q. 89, ad 2. 


Sloral Theology 55 


XVII. The mean of virtue is either the mean of the thing 
or the mean of reason; the former is objective, and is the same 
for everybody and in all circumstances; the latter depends on 
the prudent use of reason, and differs for different persons and 
in different circumstances. Justice, for example, holds to the 
mean of the thing, for it demands from all and always: To 
give each one his due, neither more nor less. If one gives 
more, he does not act against but beyond justice. There is 
only one extreme, namely, to fall short of what is due. Forti- 
tude, on the contrary, holds to the mean of reason between 
two extremes. He who exposes himself needlessly is foolhardy; 
he who flies from danger, when reason tells him to stand his 
ground, is timid; he who is neither timid nor foolhardy is 
valiant. What is foolhardy in one circumstance may be 
timidity in another. The mean here is between the extremes 
of the contrary vices. ‘Temperance finds its mean between 
excessive use and excessive abstinence. Let us say, for exam- 
ple, in matters of food and drink. What is excessive for one 
need not be so for the other. 

Justice alone seeks the mean of the thing; the other moral 
virtues, the mean of reason. 

For the theological virtues there is no mean in regard to 
the object to which they tend. We cannot believe, trust, or 
love God too much. Wherefore the mean of faith, hope and 
charity can only be that the act is placed in suitable time and 
intensity with all the subjective conditions demanded by the 
true act. 

It might seem that in faith and hope there is a mean as 
between overcredulity and incredulity, between presumption 
and despair; but a closer analysis will prove that this is not a 
mean of faith nor of hope but of the pious affection of credulity 
or of trust, which pious affections are not theological but moral 
virtues. The matter at issue is not whether we are to believe 
or hope for the things of God firmly or lightly as we do when 
men are in question, but whether we have reason to believe 


56 Fundamental 





that God has really spoken or promised these things; and this 
belongs to the pious affection of credulity, which, since it is a 
moral virtue, finds its mean in the mean of reason. 

XVIII. Even in the natural order, to be a man of character 
and virtue demands not only one or the other good habit but 
an endeavor to practice all virtues. A truthful man, who is 
intemperate or unchaste, with all his fidelity to promises, is 
devoid of character. As Cicero says: “‘If you confess that one 
virtue is wanting you, it necessarily follows that you have 
none.’” There must, then, be a something which blends all of 
man’s moral actions into a mutual relationship and harmony. 
In the moral life the will is dominated by its loves. St. 
Francis de Sales explains this, saying: “‘No doubt the will 
rules love, since it loves as it chooses; and among the many 
loves presented to her affections she chooses as she prefers. 
But, having chosen one, she lives in it and is ruled by it, and 
thus the will takes on the qualities of the love she has espoused.” 

This solves the paradox of the two testimonies of our 
conscience. The one tells us we are free and responsible; the 
other insists that our will is fixed by our loves. Our loves 
prompt our will either to elicit or to command or to reject 
certain acts not only transiently but permanently, not only 
for one or the other action but for the whole line of action. 
By its loves our will is qualified as noble or ignoble, pure or | 
impure; and thus our moral life is our will. Therefore, even 
in the natural order, the virtues are connected and federated 
together, but not swallowed up so as to lose their identity, by 
love. This love which binds the virtues together is the love of 
God. Receding from this love, our habits become vices, are 
disjoined one from the other, and vitiate the harmony of the 
moral life. God is the supreme good, the author and exemplar 
of all good; and our will can never cease yearning until it has 
found this good. Its loves are good or bad, as they conform 
to God’s will or recede from it. Wherefore St. Augustine says: 
“Virtue is nothing else than the supreme love of God.” 








Moral Theology Aff 





XIX. In the natural order the moral virtues dispose our 
love to the real good. Buta general inclination is not sufficient. 
Kach human act must be brought before the bar of prudence. 
The verdict must be given not merely along the lines of the 
general principles of morality, but must take into consideration 
the many-sided and varying circumstances of life. The 
sentence must be passed on this point at issue: Is this particular 
act good in this particular circumstance. ‘The judgment and 
command, let the act be placed, belongs to the practical reason. 
Prudence guides, checks and leads the sensuous and the rational 
appetite, lest the practical reason be swayed by them unto 
false good. Each moral virtue is thus brought before prudence 
for such guidance, restraint and leadership. 

On the other hand, prudence relies for such guidance and 
restraint on the help of all the moral virtues. It is a question 
of the end of man’s whole life; and, therefore, the help not only 
of one but of all the virtues is sought. Moreover, a right 
choice demands a right appetite. The moral virtues incline 
both the sensuous and the rational appetite to right. Thus 
prudence depends on the moral virtues as science depends on 
the knowledge of true principles. Prudence perfects the practi- 
cal reason and is disposed unto so doing by the moral virtues. 
Prudence links the acquired virtues together; and they are 
linked up with prudence. 

But love, after all, is the determining factor; wherefore says 
St. Augustine: ‘“‘Prudence is love discerning aright that 
which helps from that which hinders us in tending to God.”’ 
St. Thomas explains how St. Augustine can thus qualify 
prudence as love, saying: ‘‘Now, of those things which are 
directed to the end, there is counsel in the reason and choice 
in the appetite of which two counsel belongs more properly to 
prudence. .. . but choice can be ascribed to it indirectly in so 
far as prudence directs the choice by means of counsel. It 
(prudence) includes application to action, which application 
is an act of the will.’’ 


58 Fundamental 


XX. This union of all virtues in love is absolutely true in 
the supernatural order wherein this union is effected by the 
supernatural virtue of love which is called charity, which has 
as its direct material object God Himself, and, as its formal 
object, the supreme goodness of God. Its aim in this life is to 
make us happy in the service of God as children serving their 
father and, through this service, to come to a complete and 
everlasting union with Him. 

The Scholastics call charity the form of all the virtues—by 
form meaning the vital principle—as the soul is to the body, 
so charity is to the virtues. All the virtues are lifeless in the 
supernatural life, unless informed by charity, and cannot make 
aman virtuous. Charity makes him good in the full sense of 
the word, and subordinates all the other virtues to itself, and 
directs them to its end. 

Lest some one reply that this is effected by sanctifying 
grace, it is well to remember that many theologians hold that 
charity is sanctifying grace, and that sanctifying grace is 
charity. But even in the other opinion which perhaps is the 
more probable, though charity is distinguished in reality from 
sanctifying grace, the virtue, rather than the grace, is the vital - 
form of the virtues. There is a mutual interchange of good 
between man’s merits and God’s reward, which is friendship. 
The formal reason of this friendship is charity. 


XXI. Sanctifying grace and charity form one inseparable 
bond which unites man to his final end. The moral virtues 
do not regard the final end directly; they regard the means 
to that end. Faith shows this end but does not obtain it, for 
even the wicked can have faith; hope gives the guarantee that 
we can obtain it; charity embraces it. As we do not tend 
towards an unknown end, thus we do not embrace an absent 
good, charity brings the supreme good to us: “If any one love 
me....my Father will love him, and we will make our abode 
with him.” 28 


(28) John xiv, 21, 23. 


Sloral Theology 59 








“Faith,” the Apostle tells us, ““worketh by charity.” 2° If 
we accept “‘worketh” in the passive voice, as the Greek text 
demands, it means, charity is the vital form of faith in the 
same way as St. James says: ‘‘For even as the body without 
the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.’ ?° If 
we take it in the active sense as in the Latin text, it means, 
that as the body worketh by the soul, so faith worketh by 
charity. 

All other virtues are imperfect without charity. St. Paul, 
enumerating the virtues of faith, mercy and fortitude, adds, 
“but if I have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’’3: This 
charity makes man good and virtuous, and subordinates all the 
other virtues to its end. “But above all things have charity, 
which is the bond of perfection.’’ +2 Thus charity is the form 
of virtue, for, just as in the body, the soul gives life, charity gives 
vitality to the virtues. It is the examplar of all virtues, not 
because they are begotten in its likeness, but because they 
work according to its manner; namely, each virtue tends to 
its own definite good, but charity tends to the Supreme Good, 
which is the Author of all good. The finite good is but a 
reflection of the Supreme Good.” :3 

Charity with sanctifying grace is the source of all merit; 
and to the quantity of charity the quantity of merit will 
respond. For each virtue, in accord with the good which is 
proper to it, there will be an accidental reward. 3 4 


XXII. When we affirm that all virtues are connected into 
one chain, this does not necessarily mean that one must possess 
all or none. It merely means that, unless they are thus con- 
nected, there is an imperfection. Again, this does not demand 
that all be possessed in the same degree of perfection. In the 
natural order the union of the virtues means theoretically that, 
unless so linked up, they have not obtained their just develop- 


(29) Gal. v, 6. (30) James ii, 26. 
sl elee@orexiii, ol, ayo: (82) Col. iii, 14. 
(33) St. Thomas, Q. Disp. de Car., a. 3, ad 6. 

(34) St. Thomas, De Ver., q. 26, a. 6, ad 8. 


60 Fundamental 





ment; practically it means that one or the other or even several 
virtues cannot qualify a man as good. 

In the supernatural order the union of the virtues in charity 
means that, unless they are so united, the other virtues have 
lost the vital form needed for this higher life that they have 
lost their effectiveness. Again, not (a) as if charity must 
elicit or command each meritorious act, but that charity holds 
up the examplar, the mirror as it were, to the other virtues, 
showing the Supreme Good of which the particular good is 
only a reflection; (b) that a positive act of charity, elicited at 
certain times, must subordinate and direct all these particular 
goods to the Supreme Good loved for His own sake, which is 
the final end of all virtue and of all meritorious action. 

XXIII. Many theories are advanced for the betterment 
of the individual. There are those who dream of a physical 
betterment by a selective interbreeding of the vigorous and 
healthy types to produce an ideal man of power, “‘whose body 
is the ready servant of his will and does with pleasure all the 
work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of.”’ 

Others, seeing a little higher, would add to this, ‘‘whose 
intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, ready to be turned to any 
kind of work.”’ 

The power of the body and the intellect thus fused would 
perhaps produce a mechanism ready to produce the work of 
the world. But to do this there must be control. The bolt 
of lightning, shooting from the clouds, wreaks havoc; the mad 
rush of the cyclone leaves ruin to mark its trail; steam is im- 
potent, unless it is compressed in cylinders. Power of body and 
mind can make a demagogue or a statesman, a tyrant or a ruler, 
a hero or a scourge for humanity, a Nero ora St. Paul, an Attilla 
or a Charlemagne. Something more then is needed. Culture 
of the intellect makes a learned man; culture of the will makes 
a good man. This culture is given the will by the moral 
virtues. A man may be rich, honored and mighty; he may be 
a renowned genius, an incomparable artist, an unconquerable 


SMoral Theology 61 


general or a much heralded statesman, but this will not make 
him who possesses it a good man, nor will it make his work 
good for humanity. © 

XXIV. Aristotle says: “Virtue alone makes him who 
possesses it good.” Plutarch in his epigrams narrates this 
anecdote. The question was put to Charislaus: ‘‘Which nation 
is the best?” He readily answered: “That one in which the 
citizens vie with one another for possession of virtue.’’ Holy 
Writ summarizes this truth in the words of the Psalmist: 
“Decline from evil and do good and dwell for ever and ever.’’ 
It is not sufficient to avoid evil, doing nothing that would be 
against the law of God. By doing good we heighten the image 
and likeness of God which is in us by nature and which God’s 
grace brings almost to a participation of His very nature. 

Our earthly career is only then worth while if we endeavor 
to perfect this participation day by day. “He that is just let 
him be justified still; and he that is holy let him be sanctified 
Vstill 3 

In the first series of instructions given on the Mount, our 
Lord explains the perfection of the law. He stresses the sanc- 
tity of this law and concludes this first part of the sermon with 
the words, “‘Be you therefore perfect as also your heavenly 
Father is perfect.” :* Of course, we can never arrive at this 
absolute perfection, but the Lord sets the ideai high, so that we 
may never cease striving to make ourselves more and more like 
unto Him. St. Paul admits this impossibility, explaining to 
the Church at Philippi: ‘Not as though I had already attained 
or were perfect,’’ yet he adds: “But the one thing I do, for- 
getting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself 
to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize 
of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.’ 7 

Charity being the essence of this perfection, substantially 
it is the same for all; yet there are varying degrees, because not 





(35) Apoe. xxii, 11. (36) Matt. v, 48. 
(87) Phil. iii, 12, 13, 14. 





62 | Fundamental 








each state in life gives the same means, nor can the virtues be 
practiced in the same manner by all, for “the Spirit breatheth 
where he will’’.8 In every state of life the virtues must be 
practiced according to the manner and the means given to each; 
and thus we should strive to obtain such as are commensurate 
to the state in life assigned to us. 

XXYV. The virtues are not only helps to perfection; but, 
since they heighten the image and likeness of God in us,_are, 
in a certain sense, this perfection itself. Thus, for instance, 
wisdom, by which we contemplate the divine things in the one 
vision, namely, God, the first and universal principle and the 
final end of all created beings, seeing that ‘‘every best gift and 
every perfect gift is from above coming from the Father of 
lights’’, impresses on our knowledge a unity similar to the unity 
in God, Who, contemplating His own essence, sees all things. 
The virtue of patience which, in weal or in woe, enables us to 
possess quiet of soul in the full turbulence of life, reflects the 
unchangeableness of God, “‘with Whom there is no change nor 
shadow of alteration.’”’ The virtue of temperance, recalling 
the rebellious manifestations of the passions to the soul centre 
and thus begetting in man a feeling of concentration making 
him act as a concentrating and concentrated being, reflects 
the absolute oneness of God’s acts. Thus similarly for all the 
virtues. 





(38) John iii, 8. 


SHloral Theology 63 





CHAPTER THREE 


The Obligation of Human Law 


ARTICLE, 1 
Laws of the Civil Government 


I. In the chapter on Moral Obligation it is established 
that man participates of the Divine Providence not only in 
the sense of subjection but likewise because he can ordain for 
himself and for his subjects a rule of individual or of social life. 
From the foregoing, too, it is evident that to evoke the dictate 
“T must’’, every law must in some manner participate of the 
eternal law of God. “The freedom of those,”’ says Leo XIII, 
“who are in charge is not that they may command rashly and 
according to their whims. The force of human laws lies in 
this that they are understood to flow from the eternal law and 
that they sanction nothing which is not contained in this law 
as in the source of all right.””: “For God in the things which 
are and which are seen has fashioned certain secondary causes 
in which, in a certain manner, the divine nature and action of 
God is discernable and which make for that end to which the 
whole universe tends; thus, too, in civil society He wills that 
there be a ruling authority and that those who are vested with 
this authority reflect the image of the divine power over man- 
kind and of His Divine Providence.”’ ? 

St. Thomas defines law as “an ordering of reason for the 
good of the community, promulgated by one in whom the care 
of the community is vested.’’* ‘Political subjection differs 
from servile: the servile subject is and acts for the good of 
another, the political subject is and acts for himself. The 





(1) Weeerclical: Libertas, Letters of Leo XIII, Paee joy 1 
(2) Encyclical, Immortale Dei, lib. cit., p. 10 
(3) I-II, q. 90, a. 


64 } Fundamental 


servant is ruled not for his own but for the benefit of the 
master; the citizen is ruled for his own good, not for the benefit 
of the ruler. The political ruler, governing the people, seeks 
not his own good but the good of the people; the tyrant seeks 
his own not the people’s good, as Aristotle teaches’ (Kthies - 
1, 8,c. 10). Thus if there is question of servant in political rule, 
he who presides rather than he who is subject should be called 
the servant, as St. Augustine teaches: (1. 9, de civit., c. 14). 


II. ‘Forms of government and titles to exercise it and the 
power itself, as existing in its determinate possessors,”’ says 
Cardinal Billot, “are not immediately from God, but only 
through the medium of human consent, that is, the consent of 
the community.” * He then explains: “‘Not in the sense that 
the right of sovereignty in itself comes from the people after 
the manner of an instrumental power which flows from a 
supreme commissioner to one commissioned... . Since authority 
in itself is constituted not by human but by divine natural 
right, there is nothing left for the human will or action but the 
determination and designation of the ruler. . . . Through this 
designation the people become the proximate cause, not indeed . 
of the power as such, but of the joining of power to such a 
person, according to such or such a measure and such or such 
conditions.”’ Our authority then goes on to explain the diffi- 
culty; but how can the community give what it has not? “At 
the moment,’’ he says, ‘‘before the institution of a government, 
there exists a society constituted not indeed ultimately and in 
perfect actuality, yet in potentiality.” ‘‘Whenever a determi- 
nate multitude of men assembled to help one another for a 
political purpose exists, there is at hand a social power, not 
indeed for governing that body, but for constituting sovereignty 
from which the governing power is derived. This power, in 


(4) Bellarmine, de laicis., c. 7. Cf. Encyclical, Immortale Dei,““They, therefore, who should 
rule with even- -handed justice, ate as masters, but rather as fathers, for the rule of God over 
man is most just, and is tempered always with a father’s kindness. Government should, 
moreover, be administered for the well-being of the citizens because they who govern others 
possess authority solely for the welfare of the State.’’ Lib. cit., p. 109 at bottom. 


(5) Billot, de Ecclesia Christi, c. III, q. X XII, 4th edit., p. 497. 


Moral Theology 65 














as far as it is from God, exists immediately in a concrete subject 
or possessor, namely, in the community itself, by which it is 
afterwards retained or is transferred to one monarch or to a 
select group.” *® From this it does not follow “that one 
government can be deposed and another instantly substituted 
at the whim of the multitude. A will which does not follow 
the order of reason neither has nor can have validity.” 7 ‘The 
right to sovereignty is unlike the right of property in as much 
as by nature sovereignty is ordained not for the benefit of him 
who holds it, but for the benefit of society. Hence,if at any time 
the public good requires a new form of government and a new 
designation of rulers, no preexisting right of any person or any 
family can validly prohibit this change. The right to create 
the new legitimate government inheres in the community 
habitually or potentially. However it ought not to be used 
rashly or whimsically but when its use is demanded by the 
common good and social tranquillity.” s 


III. The theory of law held by practically all outside of 
the Catholic Church is: all law arises from the will of men and 
whatsoever this will of man expresses, is law. For some this 
expression must come through the ballot; for others it, too, 
may come through violence. This theory is the direct offspring 
of the dictum of Montesquieu and Bentham: “The State is 
the source of all law.”’ 

In the Catholic view law is the measure or rule of the human 
will ordering it to place or not to place a certain act. ‘“‘The 
measure,” says St. Thomas, “‘of the human will is twofold, one 
proximate and homogeneous to the will itself, namely human 
reason; the other is the first rule namely, the eternal law which 
is, aS it were, the reason of God.”’ 9 

The axiom, “Man is a law unto himself,’”’ is true therefore 
in the sense that the immediate guide, the one homogeneous to 
his will, is his own reason. But the axiom is false in the sense 


(6) Ibid., p. 498. (7) Ibid., p. 500. 
(8) Ibid., p. 502 and 503. (9) I, II, q. 71, a. 6. 





66 Fundamental 





that man is not obliged to bring his own reason into conformity 
with the ‘‘reason of God’’. This eternal law, “the reason of 
God,” is not an arbitrary fiat of God; but is the effluence of 
his will governed by his wisdom and benevolence. 

A thing is right therefore not merely because God has so 
willed but because the very order of things which God created 
demands that it be thus. Man is a law unto himself, because 
he must be guided by his own reason educated to see the “‘reason 
of God” in his own very nature and in the very nature of things 
round about him. | 

The most precious natural gift bestowed upon man by the 
Creator, is the freedom of his will, which enables him to choose 
his action; but by necessity this freedom of the will is curtailed; 
first, by the rule homogeneous to man’s will, namely, his reason, 
which tells him that he has various duties towards himself; 
then it is further curtailed because he is a creature of God, 
and as such he has duties towards God, his Creator; thirdly, 
it is curtailed by the fact that man was not created merely as 
an individual, but as a social being destined to live with others, 
and as such all his gifts, powers, possessions besides being his | 
individual personal prerogatives are in a manner, too, the 
prerogatives of the society in which he lives, and since the well- 
being of the society in which he lives reacts upon his own 
individual well-being what he loses in favor of this society, he 
regains by the favor of this society. Therefore the curtailment 
of human freedom by law can only be justified in so far as this 
curtailment is necessary or useful, in the ultimate analysis, for 
man’s individual well-being. Man can never lose the personal 
dignity of being created according to the image and likeness of 
God. Any law which would lessen or dim this image and like- 
ness is by that very fact not a law but a tyranny. There are 
therefore certain rights and prerogatives which are immutable 
and inalienable. Such rights are not subject to the will of the 
majority, or of the ballot, or of legislation. 


HMoral Thealogy | 67 





IV. Some in order to justify the theory, the will of the 
majority is the source of all rights, appeal to Public Conscience. 
Vox popult, they say, vox Dei, ‘““The voice of the people is the 
voice of God,”’ is true, if the opinion is practically unanimous, is 
constant through many years, and is based on thoughtful 
experience and sound judgment; for then, in its ultimate 
analysis, this voice of the people arises from the very nature of 
things and thus is the voice of God who created this order of 
things. But the axiom is made to serve a totally different 
purpose. Under the pretense of a free state the right of fran- 
chise to vote is being extended to all and the vote of the 
majority is proclaimed to be the Public Conscience. In theory 
the majority rules; but in practice the majority is artificially 
produced by relatively few, who style themselves leaders. 
This majority is nowadays, not made so much by the cruder 
methods of buying votes, of willful miscount, and such other 
manipulations, as by the study of mob psychology and by 
exciting a mob spirit by which the leaders make a majority. 
This mob has well been defined: ‘‘A crowd of people showing 
a unanimity due to mental contagion.” 1° 

The mob spirit can be defined: a mental contagion arising 
from suggestion and imitation which takes hold of the many 
who in this frenzy become an unreasoning machine manipulated 
by one or a few leaders. The suggestion is spread by some 
catch phrase or sensational proclamation. ‘The telegraph and 
telephone, steam and electricity, the press, the theatre and 
moving picture spread the contagion like wild fire. The 
unthinking many thrown off their balance, take up the cry. 
No time is allowed to regain the equilibrium of sound judgment. 

Imitation, too, is a powerful agent for spreading the 
epidemic. The most damning phrase today is, ““Behind the 
times,” “‘A Back Number.’”’ Our system of education, based 
on much reading and much seeing, without definite aim or 
perspective, has caused the power to discriminate between 


(10) Foundations of Sociology, Ross, p. 103. 


68 Sundamental 





ideas in respect to their value to lag far behind the capacity to 
receive ideas and thus the individual is left with nothing to do 
but to follow the drift. Our knowledge of facts has increased | 
enormously, but our judgment of facts has decreased in the 
same proportion. ‘The multitude can tell you trippingly what 
so and so said, but few can tell why he said it. The voz 
populi today is but an expression engendered by such sugges- 
tion and imitation. The “political landslide’, the ‘“‘tidal 
wave’’, is the expression of this hysteria. How else can the 
sudden reversal of political thought and action which seizes 
on the many be explained? 

Some of those who now so violently defend the omnipotence 
of the majority may some day be disillusioned, when a tem- 
porary majority decrees the abolition of private property, and 
the sequestration of private fortunes. It is all very well to 
talk about the good sense of the American people: but in our 
generation we have seen reversals of opinions on most vital 
issues, such as a preceding generation would have scouted and 
we ourselves have declared impossible of realization. 

The builders of the American Constitution forsaw this dan- . 
ger and to forestall it instituted the Supreme Court with the 
power not only to interpret the words of the constitution or of 
statute law, but likewise with power to decide whether or not a 
legislative enactment runs counter to a man’s inalienable and 
immutable rights, which spring from the very nature of things 
and find their ultimate sanction in the will of God. '! 


V. The ideal government, according to St. Thomas, is 
one wherein are combined the various forms of human govern- 
ment: ‘The kingdom, is so far as one is the head of all, the 
aristocracy in so far as many participate in this rule, the 
democracy, in so far as all the people are eligible to become 
rulers and the rulers are elected by all the people.”’ ' 2 

He compares the co-ordination of rule in such a state to the 
human body wherein all “‘is dependent on one moving dominant 


(11) Cf. Life of John Marshall, by Albert Beveridge. (12) I-EI, q. 105; a. 1. 


Parcre jenleupse eh nN L eS ee Fee 


principle, yet so that every member retains its own distinct 
nature and peculiar function and is of benefit to every other 
member and of the whole body’’.:* Just as some Gothic 
cathedral of the Middle Age, wherein each part reflects in 
detail the idea and plan of the whole structure. 

Such a government must reflect the whole scheme and 
general system of creation, wherein each separate organism 
receives from the central motor, God, in accordance with its 
peculiar nature and mode of existence, its vital impulse and 
the laws of activity, disposed to the final end and purpose of 
all things—God. ‘Thus, though there is an evolution from the 
particular to the general, from the individuals to the family, 
tribe, city, state, empire, this evolution is centrifugal—it 
evolves out of the centre out of which comes the principle of 
authority, tending upwards to God, its author, and downwards 
to the man, its subject. ' 4 

For as the Psalmist says: “Unless the Lord build the house, 
they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, 
He watches in vain that keeps it.”?15> “‘There is no power but 
from God; and they that are, are ordained of God.” ! 6 

The authority in human society cannot recede from God. 
The personality and dignity of man cannot be swallowed up 
by the society, and the individual cannot stand separate and 
aloof from the society. There must be laws; but they may 
not contravene the law of God; they may not debase the 
liberty of the individual, they may not rend asunder the bonds, 
which hold the individuals together in the society. There 
must be inalienable and immutable rights not subject to human 
legislation, not subject to the will of the majority. 

VI. It is the function of the state to regulate by wise laws 
those elements which enter into the civil and political life of the 
nation, those things, namely, which make for the temporal 


(18) De regim. princ., IV, 23. 

(14) Meyer, S.J., Sociale Frage; Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Ergaenzungs Hefte, p. 62 sqq. 
(15) Psalm 126, 1, 2. y 

(16) Romans 13, 1. 


70 Fundamental 


happiness of the people, which happiness presupposes and is 
based on the higher life of Christian perfection. 

Its scope thus embraces whatsoever makes for the preserva- 
tion, perfection and purpose of human government, namely, 
for the good of all its subjects. These goods are various: 
they are intellectual, wherefore it is the duty of the state to 
provide means of education for its people and even to compel 
all to receive at least a minimum of such education in letters, 
science, and the arts necessary not only for the individual but 
for the common weal; the goods of the will, wherefore it is the 
duty of the state to promote the social and moral virtues, to 
fight vice and to punish crimes; the goods of the body, where- 
fore it is the duty of the state to watch over the health of its 
subjects; the goods of fortune, wherefore it is the duty of the 
state to. govern the production, distribution and consumption 
of wealth. 

In fulfillment of its mission the state must uphold and en- 
force the natural law and punish those who transgress it. 
However it is not of the province of the state to enforce all the 
precepts of the natural law, some of these must be left to- 
private conscience. The state has not the purpose to sanctify 
the individual; but to regulate the morals of the individual in 
so far as they affect directly the common weal and fall under 
the public notice of the public authority. In this connection, 
St. Thomas remarks: “‘Human government is derived from 
the divine government and should be modelled after it. God, 
though He is omnipotent and is the supreme good, allows 
some evils to be in the universe, though He could stop them; 
He tolerates these, lest impeding them other and greater good 
be thereby impeded, or greater evils follow. Thus too, the 
civil government must tolerate certain evils lest greater good 
be impeded or greater evils follow.:7 God left the sanctifica- 
tion of the individual to His Church and the punishment of 
private sins to conscience and the hereafter. 

(17) F-II, q. 101, a. 8, ad 2. 


Moral Theology 71 


The state has the right to determine by positive law those 
points which are vague and undetermined in the natural law. 
Such as, for instance, how last will and testaments are to be 
drawn, how children may succeed to the fortune of their 
parents and other such rights, which though established under 
a general form by the natural law, yet are not determined in 
detail. The general determination of natural law must how- 
ever be the basis for the specific determination of the positive 
law of the state. The state has the right to supply where the 
natural law is silent; but the state has no right to forbid what 
the natural law allows or to allow what the natural law forbids. 
Nor has it the right to violate equity by serving the private 
advantage of some rather than the common good of all nor by 
unequal distribution unequally distributing the burdens nor by 
commanding what for the many is morally impossible. 18 


VII. When Christ, the Son of God, instituted the Church, 
He gave into her keeping the spiritual welfare of mankind. In 
order that she might be able to carry on her mission of the 
salvation of souls, He gave her full power to make laws necessary 
for the general spiritual welfare of the people. “To me,” 
says the Savior, “is given all power in heaven and on earth. 
Go ye therefore and teach ye all nations—teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”’ ! 9 

By these words Jesus transferred the plentitude of power, 
which was His to His Church. That the Apostles were con- 
scious of this power is evidenced by the words of St. Paul to 
the Corinthians: ‘“‘Having in readiness to revenge all dis- 
obedience.” 2° 

And again from the warning he sends them: “‘I write these 
things being absent, that being present, I may not deal more 
severely, according to the power which the Lord hath given 
me unto edification, and not unto destruction.” 2! 

This power over the souls of men Christ gave exclusively 





(18) Bouquillon, Theol. Mor. Fund., p. 448. 
(19) Matth. 28, 18. (20) 2-Cor. 10, 6. (21) 2 Cor. 12, 10. 





72 Fundamental 





to His Church; to use it independently from all other society. 
“The Church,” says Leo XIII, “is a society chartered as of di- 
vine right, perfect in its nature and its title, to possess in itself 
and by itself through the will and loving kindness of its founder 
all needful provision for its maintenance and its action.” 22 

Whatever, therefore, has reference to divine worship and 
the salvation of men’s souls, such as the offering of the sacrifice, 
the administration of the sacraments, etc., comes under the 
exclusive jurisdiction of the Church. In the exercise of its 
ministry the Church stands in need of material goods. She 
has a right, therefore, that the state recognize and protect her 
title to such material goods as she has acquired for the purpose 
of carrying on her mission. 

Though the state has received no direct commission from 
God to watch over the spiritual interests of man and its 
jurisdiction is entirely confined to the temporal well-being of 
the community, it is none the less a creature of God and as 
such owes him worship. The state must, therefore, recognize 
in its actions the existence of a Supreme Being. 

Moreover the moral status of the individuals in the com- 
munity makes for the temporal well-being of the community, 
it is thus to the interest of the state to protect, to help and to 
second the efforts of religion. 

The observance of law depends to a great extent on God’s 
sanction of the laws of the state. The police protection of 
the state, the threat of penitentiary sentence is hardly sufficient 
to maintain law and order in the state. Something more is 
needed and this something more is the conviction among men, 
that a transgression of a just law of the state is a sin, just as is 
the transgression of the law of God and will be punished by 
Him. In the words of the Apostle: ‘‘Vhere is no power but 
from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. He that 
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. Be subject 
of necessity not only for wrath but also for conscience sake.” 2 3 


(22) Encyclical, Immortale Dei, 1. c. (23) Romans 18, 2-5. 


Moral Theology 73 





It is thus to the interest of the state to help the Church 
spread such and other like religious motives for the observance 
of law and order. 


ARTICLE II 
The Binding Force of Civil Law 


““Give therefore to Caesar,’ says the Lord, “‘the things that 
are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”’: In this 
passage our Lord undoubtedly teaches obedience to the civil 
power and to a certain extent He puts this obligation on the 
same plane as subjection to God’s law. 

St. Paul after having posited the premises: ‘There is no 
power but from God and those that are, are ordained of God;’’ 
“He that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God,”’ 
concludes, ‘““They that resist, purchase to themselves damna- 
tion.’’ ‘‘Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, 
but also for conscience sake.”’ 2 

St. Peter just as emphatically tells the faithful: ‘Be 
subject therefore to every human creature for God’s sake; 
whether it be to the king as excelling; or to the governors as 
sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise 
of the good.’’: Wherefore there can be no doubt but that 
human legislators can bind in conscience even under pain of 
eternal reprobation. Every law must have a sanction, namely, 
an efficacious means to induce obedience. The underlying 
notion of a moral law, as a moral force which compels the 
otherwise free will to yield to it, makes this plain. In the state 
of fallen nature the very good or evil of the act—satisfaction or 
remorse—is not sufficient to bind all men or even to bind the 
average man in all circumstances. Some further reward or 
punishment must be attached to the observance or non- 

(1) Matt., 22, 21. 


(2) Romans 1, 2, 3. 
(3) I. Peter ii, 18, 14. 





74 Hundamental 


observance of a law. There must be some way to force ‘re- 
bellious subjects to obedience, if they will not do so because of 
the good that comes from observance, they must be forced by 
the threat of the evil consequent upon transgression. ‘The 
very nature of this binding force of law, since it is not a physical 
outward but a moral inward tie, proves that it must react to 
conscience, 1.e., place an obligation in conscience.‘ This 
obligation in conscience may be direct or indirect, namely he 
who violates the law will thereby incur guilt in conscience or 
hypothetically, as in merely penal laws, if convicted he will in 
conscience be obliged to pay the just penalty. 

Some maintain that this obligation in merely penal laws 
is placed disjunctively, namely, either you will do this or you 
will undergo this punishment. In this opinion the choice would 
be left the subject either to do as the law commands or to pay 
the penalty.* This is hardly tenable, for the legislator is not 
indifferent as to whether his subjects want to obey or prefer 
to suffer. He really wants obedience and to force this obedi- 
ence he hypothetically states: “If you will not obey you will 
have to suffer.’ . 

If it were disjunctive the obligation as such would arise 
only after sentence is passed. In reality though the obligation 
is there from the beginning. 

Wherefore Suarez justly says: “Obligations under threat of 
punishment, though they do not oblige in conscience to place an 
act, do oblige under pain of punishment.’’ ‘“‘Mere penal laws 
contain only one precept which is hypothetical—you will be 
amenable to this punishment if you do not do this.” * After 
the transgressor has been found guilty he is in conscience 
bound to pay the fine assessed. If he defrauds the government 
of the fine, he is bound to make restitution. A penalty such as 


(4) Sum. I, II, q. 96, a. 4. Suarez, de legibus d. Bat 21 et 22. 

(5) Antoine, Theol. Mor. Tr. de legibus, c. 8, q. 1, n. 2. Tanqueray, Theol. Mor. de 
legibus, n. 347. D’Annibale, Summula 1, n. 207. Bouquillon, Theol. Mor., n. 131. 

(6) De leg. 1. 5, c. 4, n. 1. Vermeersch, Theol. Mor., vol. I, n. 169. Jos. Biederlak, S.J., 
Zeitschrift, Innsbruck, vol. 23, pp. 159 et 160. 


Floral Theology 75 








imprisonment may be avoided by legitimate means. Im- 
prisonment is not a debt due the government in conscience. 

Vermeersch maintains: The effect to produce obligation 
need not necessarily be inherent in a law. He argues thus: 
The legislator who wills that his practical dictate of something 
to be done by his subjects become a practical dictate for all his 
subjects, in reality ordains them for the common good. This 
his will or intention is a legislative will. Now this his will 
may be really efficacious, i.e., it does generally dispose the 
subjects for the common good. ‘This effect can at times be 
obtained without urging an obligation, namely, the good will 
of the subjects is sufficient to effect compliance. If then an 
external punishment be a sufficient and effective means the 
legislator would attain his purpose by obliging them merely 
under threat of such external punishment. Such punishment 
would be just because it would be inflicted because of a trans- 
gression of an order legitimately established, though this order 
would not be essential nor enjoined under pain of sin. There 
would be a crime in the external forum but none in the forum 
of conscience.’ The argument if examined closely does not 
fully prove. Psychologically, why is it that subjects obey? 
Because they feel that their wills are bound by the will of the 
legislator. This force again is the interior moral force which 
we call conscience. 

Those who would otherwise be rebellious are forced to obey 
by the consideration, I will be forced to undergo punishment. 
This is not a yielding merely to outward force. ‘Though per- 
haps not reasoned out in detail by the individual subject, 
basically the force lies in this: my will is tied down, for when 
sentence is passed I will be bound to pay the penalty. This 
moral force is conscience. 

St. Thomas answers the objection, if there is no fault 
there can be no punishment, by the distinction “if punish- 
ment is considered as punishment it can be inflicted only 


(7) Vermeersch, lib. cit., n. 169. 


76 | Fundamental 


because of sin, but if it be looked upon as promotive of the 
common weal it can be inflicted where there has been no 
fault but where there is a cause.’’ This gave rise later on 
to the rule of law, “‘where there is no fault there may be no 
punishment, unless there be a cause.’’’ This in turn gave 
rise to the distinction between a moral fault and a juridical 
fault, or as some prefer to qualify the latter, social fault. 
Thus for the common good those stricken with communicable 
disease may be isolated; negligence though there was no fault 
in conscience may be punished, certain acts may be declared 
null and void. In penal laws there was no fault in conscience, 
but for the sake of obtaining the common good, those found 
guilty must pay the penalty fixed by law. Bouquillon places 
a limitation by demanding that the punishment inflicted must 
be a real compensation for the fault. Thus he says breaking 
the fast could be punished by assessing an alms; tax dodging, 
by assessing fines; but not wearing the ecclesiastical dress 
cannot be compensated for by a fine. In the first cases there 
is a real compensation, the punishment being in the same order 
as the purpose the legislator has in view, to wit, mortification - 
or revenue for the state; in the latter case there is no such 
interchangeability.* This theory is more tenable in the view 
mere penal laws place a disjunctive obligation than in the view 
the obligation is hypothetical. 

To sum up therefore it may safely be maintained that the 
laws of civil government may bind either in conscience directly 
and thus be strictly moral laws placing a moral obligation, or 
they may be mere penal laws binding in conscience indirectly 
to undergo punishment if found guilty. This opinion is to 
say the least both intrinsically and extrinsically probable. 

On what will it depend whether a certain law is binding 
directly in conscience or is a mere penal law? 





(8) II-II, q. 108, a. 4. Regula juris 25 in sexto “‘sine culpa, nisi subsit causa, non est aliquis 
puniendus.”’ 


(9) Bouquillon, lib. cit., n. 131. 


SHoral Theology G7 








The only tenable answer which can be given is: the extent 
of the binding force depends on the reasonable will of the legis- 
lator. 1° 

To maintain that all laws of modern legislators are merely 
penal because the trend seems to be to eliminate God and 
conscience entirely from civil legislation, is an extreme view. !! 
No formal belief in a Deity or in the hereafter is needed to 
put an obligation in conscience; it suffices for the legislator 
to will to govern in the strict sense of the word with all the 
power at his command. 

Furthermore, the natural law demands that some govern- 
mental laws bind in conscience. Legislation by civil govern- 
ment is needed to apply the natural law to the ever varying 
circumstances, such as the political or economic conditions of 
the country may bring about; it is likewise needed to further 
determine in detail the outlines of natural or divine positive 
law. This determination to be effective must put an obligation 
in conscience. ! 2 

The observance of all laws in all circumstances by all with- 
out a direct sanction in conscience is a moral impossibility. 
Legislators who would will that all the laws of the country 
be merely penal would act against the dictate of nature, per 
consequens their will would be unreasonable and the natural 
law would supply the defect. 

Because many legislators affect not to believe in God and 
wish to eliminate all idea of a Deity from human government, 
even if the statement in its sweeping generalization were true, 
would not of itself make all their laws merely penal. 

To break down the sweeping statement, all modern legisla- 
tion is atheistic, the fact is cited that in some countries, though 





(10) Lex non obligat ultra mentem legislatoris; ergo si intendat sub sola poena obligare 
hoe, e.g., expresse declarando clarum est quod ex se ad culpam non obligent...nam actus 
agentium non operetur ultra eorum intentionem. Reiffenstuel, Jus Canonicum Universum 
Tit de constitutionibus, n. 199. 

(11) Konings, Theologia Moralis de Legibus, n. 178, 179. 

(12) Kenrick, Theologia Moralis, p. 176. Genicot-Salsman, Theo. Mor., vol. 1, 141, 4. 
Vermeersch, Theo. Mor., vol. I, 25, 32. Bouquillon, Theo. Mor. Fund., n. 210. A. Jansen, 
Jus Pontificium, Annus V, p. 24. John A. Ryan, State and Church, p. 252. 


78 | Fundamental 





avowed atheists are in control, they none the less refuse to do 
away with the oath in civil matters. This argument cannot 
be used in our country where the option is given in such cir- 
cumstances to either affirm or swear to the truth. In the 
United States this option would rather indicate that in formu- 
lating legislation our legislative bodies prescind from the ques- 
tion of conscience. 

A stronger argument is the fact that very many hold all 
morality to be a mere convention among men and the police 
power of the state to be the real effective sanction of human 
law. In spite of this undeniable fact some human laws must 
bind in conscience. 13 

On the other hand the modern fury to make laws and thus to 
cure all the ills which human nature is heir to, oversteps all 
bounds. We are thus put to the alternative, either some civil 
laws are merely penal or there are many which are no laws at 
all.:+ For surely these lawgivers cannot put an unsupportable 
yoke upon us and rush us all pell mell to hell. As Suarez con- 
tends, “‘Lest the salvation of souls be jeopardized, it is frequently 
more expedient to make laws bind merely as penal laws.” 
Some coercion is (necessary) useful but that the coercion be not 
too great is likewise useful to the soul and befits rather a benign 
watchfulness than rigor.1* If some external punishment 
threatened will bring about observance of a particular law, 
no further sanction is needed and no further obligation should 
be put. Such punishment is just because it is decreed for a 
violation of the constituted order although this order is not 
essential nor commanded under pain of sin. There isa juridical 
fault and that suffices for inflicting punishment. 

A peculiar sophistry is used to prove that an atheistic 
government might be presumed to will to bind in conscience 
more frequently than a Christian. The Christian legislator, 
they say, is often deterred by the thought not to jeopardize 


(13) Ct. above. 
(14) In New York City we are some 16,000 laws. 
(15) De leg., 1. 5, c. 4, n. 1. 


SAoral Theology 79 





the eternal salvation of his subject, whilst the atheist would 
rejoice because on account of the conscientiousness of his sub- 
jects such a powerful weapon for law enforcement is put into 
his hands. But how will you make such, we might say, 
diabolical intention rhyme with the very basic principle of 
all law, to wit, the will of the legislator must be reasonable? 
Can any sane man imagine that God has given such power to 
human beings? ' 6 

Some writers and preachers seem to be much troubled 
with the thought, to tell people openly that certain laws do 
not oblige in conscience makes for a disregard of all laws and a 
contempt for civil authority. These good people in their 
eager patriotism lose sight of the fact that making false 
consciences paves the way to hell. If it is not well to break 
down respect for civil laws, it certainly is not well either to 
exaggerate and make false consciences. ‘To harass conscience 
is a more deadly sin than to diminish chauvinism. Instead of 
- harping continually on the theme: disrespect for one law 
engenders disrespect for all laws, would it not be well to change 
the tune and sing to the world, fool laws enacted by fanatics 
and enforced by violation of personal liberty make for a com- 
plete breakdown of civil government? History teaches that 
invasion of personal liberties rather than disrespect for law 
has caused the overthrow of governments. 

To interpret the reasonable will of the legislator the same 
criteria should be applied as when there is a question whether 
a law binds under pain of mortal or venial sin. Such criteria are: 

1. The wording of the law. 

2. The purpose the legislator may have in view. This 
purpose does not of itself fall under the law but yet is a good 
indication whether the common weal demands an obligation 
in conscience. This obtains more frequently with regard to 
laws which determine the rights of people living in the com- 
munity than with regard to laws which directly command or 


(16) A. Jansen, Jus Pontificium Romae, Annus V, p. 27. 


80 , SHundamental 


forbid an action. Laws which aim to protect the individual 
from himself, namely, lest he abuse indifferent things to the 
detriment of his own health or wealth, are to be interpreted 
as merely penal more readily than those which protect more 
directly the health and the wealth of the community as such. 
Of course all civil law must aim to protect or procure the com- 
mon welfare, but this is more direct and apparent in some 
laws than in others. 

3. Acceptance of law by the subjects is not necessary to 
fix the binding force, nor does non-observance or repudiation 
of a law by the people necessarily nullify it; but custom is the 
best interpreter of laws.17 Here it might be urged: in the 
United States a goodly number of otherwise moral people 
openly scoff at the idea of civil laws binding in conscience; ! 8 
another goodly number take an obligation in conscience to 
mean nothing more than one is in honor bound to fulfill his 
duties; this in honor bound can scarcely be stretched to mean 
an obligation in conscience; others again take conscience in a 
very wide sense to mean only a something a good citizen ought 
to do (the law of the State or the will of the majority is their. 
fetish).18 The comparatively few who recognize a real 
obligation in conscience would be doubly bound, namely, unto 
guilt and unto wrath. Under such conditions would it not 
perhaps be safe to hold, that unless it is manifest that the 
common weal demands an obligation in conscience for certain 
laws, civil laws are mostly purely penal? How in different 
countries different interpretation may be put on the will of the 
legislator can be seen from the example that in Belgium, for 
instance, traffic laws for automobiles are looked upon as merely 
penal, whilst in United States such laws, at least in larger cities, 
are absolutely necessary to protect human life and are taken 
therefore more seriously. 


(17) John A. Ryan, State and Church, p. 256 sqq. 


(18) They reduce the moral obligation of legal statutes to the evil chance of incurring the 
penalty for violation. 





SMoral Theology 81 








4. The severity of the external punishment — heavy 
fines—and more especially extraordinary means taken to 
ferret out arrest and convict offenders are good criteria of 
purely penal laws. This rule cannot be applied promiscuously, 
because this severity and vigilance can be an indication of the 
determined will of the legislator to enforce the law by every 
power at his command. But it may, too, prove the contrary, 
namely, that very little is left to conscience. 

5. Laws declaring certain formalities necessary for 
validity do not as a rule forbid the placing of such invalid acts. 
Whether a person can in conscience profit by such informal acts 
depends whether the nullifying clause is attached merely as a 
bar to judicial procedure or not. 

6. ‘Today probably only such civil laws bind in conscience 
for which the common good demands such an obligation. This 
obtains more frequently with regard to laws which determine 
the rights of persons in the community than with regard to laws 
~ which directly command or forbid an action. ! ° 

7. Accidental circumstances may make that laws other- 
wise merely penal bind in conscience, e.g., time of war, 
famine, general poverty, ete. Formal contempt of civil 
authority, not of some particular law, is a grievous sin. 

After the French Revolution the tendency of laws was to 
protect the individual rather than society. The extremeness 
of this tendency gave rise to socialism. In the last quarter 
century a marked tendency has set in to subordinate almost 
entirely individual to social rights. How far the state can go 
in limiting individual rights is often difficult to state in the 
concrete. ‘To hold the balance equal between the individual 
and the community, protecting the one and the other, is a 
difficult task. The destruction of private initiative, thrift, 
personal liberty, is as fatal to the community as an over ex- 
aggerated individualism is destructive of human society. 
Private good must at times cede to the public good and Justice 


(19) Vermeersch, Theol. Mor., vol. I, n. 252. 


82 | Fundamental 


must be tempered by charity. Life would be intolerable if 
each individual would stretch his rights to the utmost. The 
state regulating the minutiae of individual life would thwart 
the very purpose of the common weal. 


ARTICLE III 
The Taxing Power of the Government 


I. Praenotanda: The question here does not touch on 
rents to be paid for special privileges, franchises, or direct 
utilities furnished, such as water, light, heat, gathering of 
ashes, garbage, mail service, etc. These are questions of 
commutative justice—a direct service is rendered for the 
benefit of the individual—there is therefore a direct quid 
pro quo. 

The question is concerning contributions made for the com- 
mon weal in which of course the individual participates, but 
only indirectly. Distributive justice demands that these 
burdens be distributed equally on the subjects according to 
their means and according to the need of the common weal. 
The duties imposed on the subjects corresponding to this right 
are in legal justice. 

This duty is personal, hence it falls directly on the person, 
but since in measuring the amount to be contributed the means 
are to be estimated, indirectly it falls on the goods the person 
possesses. It is a personal duty. As man benefits by the 
society in which he lives, and as man being of a social nature 
normally must live in some kind of community, it follows that 
he must contribute in some manner to the support of this 
community. 

Indirectly this can be proven by the dilemma, the duty is 
either personal or real. But it is not real. For if it be real, 
then it must be admitted that the community has a direct 
right to a man’s goods as if they were indentured to the 








Moral Theology 83 





community. But whence could such a right of the community 
arise? Man does not hold property by the grace of the state. 
How then can it be proven that the state has a right to a part 
of the goods movable or immovable which a man possesses or 
produces? 

Some maintain that men entering upon a political union 
bring all their goods and fortune to a common treasury to 
form, as it were, the social capital of the community, and thus 
when the state exacts contributions it is merely as the over- 
landlord exacting his share of the harvest, like the ‘‘Seigneur 
lounging in the ‘Oeil de Boeuf’.’”’ The idea contradicts both 
the psychology and the history of private property. The state 
is a society not of purses but of persons. 

If it is a personal obligation imposed because one is a mem- 
ber of this community, where is the justice in imposing a tax 
on foreigners who possess property in this community? We 
can answer: This is the license fee paid for the privilege of 
doing business or for the protection of property. The tax fee 
is rather re-tribution than contribution. Then again, in a 
certain sense they, through their property, are by international 
agreement considered for this purpose members of this com- 
munity, or perhaps better, since this tax is imposed in all 
countries on foreigners, it might be called an equalization 
among nations. 


II. The end which justifies the imposition of taxes is the 
common weal. There must thus be either a general need or 
general utility. The purpose’ is not directly to equalize 
fortunes. Private right cedes only to the public good; the 
state has no right to take simply because it judges that one 
individual has too much. Indirectly, though, because it 
imposes according to the means of each, the state may tax 
more heavily swollen fortunes than meagre incomes and thus 
to an extent decrease superabundance of fortune. In the 
Hegelian system, the omnipotent state imposes taxes because 
it so wills—pro ratione stat voluntas. This makes the state 


84 Fundamental 





to be its own raison d’étre when in truth it exists only for the 
common weal. To hold the payment of taxes to be a con- 
tractural obligation means to hold the false theory of the social 
contract. It would mean that tax levying is directly an act of 
commutative justice and would demand exact service to each 
individual. 

Nor can it be held that taxes are a commutation of benefits 
received by the state and individual. What benefits accrue 
individually to the man, who is never in court, by the public 
administration of justice? Nor is it a payment to insure the 
safety of goods. The scope of the government and its needs 
are far beyond mere safety insurance. It has been well said 
therefore that for the state to exact more than it needs for 
the public good is a species of larceny. 

The proportion of the levy should be according to the 
means of the individual by which is meant the ability to 
contribute. The proportion is not therefore the benefits 
derived from the government. “If we wanted,” says Stuart 
Mills, “‘to estimate the degree of benefit which different persons 
derive from the protection of the government, we should have - 
to consider who would suffer most if that protection were 
withdrawn; to which question, if any answer could be made, 
it must be, those would suffer most who are weakest in mind 
or body, either by nature or by position.” ! 

The demand that the amount of taxes paid shall adequately 
correspond to the amount of income received, is a practical 
impossibility. Nor does the amount of income necessarily 
exactly prove the extent of the capability to pay. Of course, 
in fixing a norm the state must work on general averages and 
therefore the ideal system would be to approach such an 
equalization as much as possible. The demand that the same 
rate be paid on all property regardless of whether there be 
revenue or none, whether the revenues be large or small, is 
made, it is claimed, on the basis of the equality of all before the 





(1) Principles of Political Economy, S. 5, ¢. 2, n. 2. 


SHloral Cheslogp 85 


law. In reality though far from equality, it levies an unequal 
burden. Why should a home be taxed at the same rate as a 
store, or a government bond that nets 5 per cent per annum be 
taxed at the same rate per hundred dollars face value as a 
corporation bond that brings 8 to 10 per cent? 

Discussing unearned increment in land values, both Dr. 
Michael Cronin (Science of Ethics, vol. Il, pp. 290 sqq.) and 
Dr. John A. Ryan (Distributive Justice, pp. 102-177) give 
the state rather broad leeway for imposing taxes. The former 
says: ‘“‘Though, therefore, what is spoken of as unearned 
increment in land is not unlawful, still in dealing with, and 
imposing taxes on increments in the value of building sites the 
government ought to be given a very free hand. For, first, a 
good deal of money would thus accrue to the community; 
secondly, such a tax would help to prevent extortions which at 
present are only too common in cities.’’ No principle, title 
or practice, Ryan holds, nor any canon of taxation has intrinsic 
or metaphysical value. All are to be evaluated with reference 
to human welfare..... In general then any method of distri- 
bution, any modification of property rights, any form of taxa- 
tion, is morally lawful which promotes the interest of the whole 
community, without causing undue inconvenience to any 
individual.’”’ This would make taxes not only revenue getters, 
but likewise equalizers of fortunes, punishment for extortion, 
subsidies for the poor, etc. Possession of private property is 
not an end in itself, it is only a means. But the welfare of the 
whole community is not the only thing which determines the 
lawfulness of such possession. ‘The individual person does not 
exist merely for the welfare of the community, he, too, exists 
unto and for himself. His title to private property is not de- 
rived merely from the community, it is derived, too, from his 
very dignity as a human person. Dr. Cronin’s first argument 
sounds very much like Satan’s offer, “‘All these things will I 
give thee, if thou wilt fall down and adore me’”’ (Matt., 4, 9). 


86 Fundamental 





In the United States even in the largest cities it is not the 
scarcity of land which makes home owning difficult. Many 
have themselves to blame; they would rather herd together 
close to the centres of amusements, thrills and excitement. 
Street cars, motor busses and like transportation facilities 
make the open spaces, God’s out of doors, where building 
lots are cheap and plentiful, available to the humblest. Light, 
water and like home comforts are easily obtainable today in 
these semi-rural districts. The poorer classes live in tenements 
on streets where a front foot costs about as much as an acre 
does in a semi-rural district. 

If the title to unearned increment is lawful, which both 
concede, it must be treated on the same equality as other 
property. If then the need in the wider sense is established 
for the community and unearned increment can stand the 
strain of higher taxation better, it may be rated higher. There 
are canons to taxation which have intrinsic value; no man can 
be despoiled of his right by the mere will of the state. ‘The 
right of sovereignty is unlike the right of property inasmuch 
as it is by nature ordained not for the benefit of him who | 
holds it but for the benefit of society’’ (Cardinal Billot, Moral 
Origin of Civil Authority, in Ryan-Millar, State and Church, 
p. 65). 


ARTICLE IV 
Obligation.in Conscience of Tax Laws 


Questions at issue: 
Do tax laws oblige in conscience? 
If so, by which virtue? 


Some maintain that all tax laws are merely penal. Thus 
Crolly says of the English tax laws: ‘‘It is really very difficult 
to state in general what is to be held in different countries and 
times about the obligation of laws imposing taxes, since this 


Hloral Theology 87 


depends greatly on the mind of the legislator. But from what 
has been stated it is evident that it is by no means certain that 
nowadays these laws oblige in conscience or in any other 
manner than as penal laws. That tax laws among us today 
practically only oblige in the manner of penal laws seems 
certain, because it is morally certain that the legislator does not 
intend to impose a further obligation. No one, or scarcely no 
one, holds that custom duties oblige in conscience. The same 
can be said of excise taxes. In the opinion of our people, 
these laws are looked upon as being in the same category as 
other tax laws. In fact there are so many tax inquisitors that 
it is evident that the government in this matter does not in 
any way trust to conscience.” ! 

Further along he confirms his opinion saying: “If there 
would be such an obligation, it would fall on the good only. 
It would produce no effect on the ungodly.”’ 

Others hold: ‘According to Catholic teaching, statutes 
imposing taxes bind in conscience. ‘The general reason is the 
same as that which attaches moral obligation to other civil 
laws. Moreover the obligation is not merely one of legal 
justice but also of strict justice which requires restitution to 
be made when it is violated.’’2 Those who hold this view 
allow only extrinsic causes as an excuse from this obligation— 
such as excessive taxation, unequal burdens, the common 
custom of tax evasion, ete. 

That tax laws of civil governments can bind in conscience is 
certain from Holy Writ: “Give unto Caesar, says our Lord, 
the things that are Caesar’s.’”’: Christ Himself shows the 
example by paying the tribute for St. Peter.: In this same 
sense St. Paul writes, ‘For therefore also you pay tribute for 
they are the ministers of God, serving unto his purpose. 





(1) De Justitia et Jure, vol. III, disp. XITI, dub. XI, n. 1015. 


(2) Ryan-Millar, State and Church, p. 267. Koch-Preuss, Handbook of Mor. Theol., 
vol. 5, p. 448. 


(3) Matt., 22, 21. 
(4) Matt., 17, 26. 


88 Fundamental 


Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute to whom 
tribute is due, custom to whom custom.”’ 5 

These text of Holy Writ do not define whether the obliga- 
tion arises from legal or commutative justice. Wherefore 
another school of moralists bases the duty of paying taxes 
simply on legal justice. Others again make a distinction, to 
wit, the obligation in conscience arises only after the tax bill 
is made out by the fiscal agents of the government. When 
the bill is made out some claim the obligation is in commutative 
justice; others, however, just as stoutly maintain that even 
then it binds only in legal justice. Vermeersch says this last 
opinion is the common opinion.* Ryan says: “As a rule, the 
citizen is not bound to pay taxes until the amount due from 
him has been defined by the fiscal authorities. When he is 
legally required to furnish a statement of his property he is 
obliged by legal justice to comply. This same authority 
claims that if the law compels the citizens to come forward and 
list their property, the citizen is bound by legal justice to pro- 
vide a statement of his taxable property.”’7 Here again the 
trend of modern opinion is against Ryan. It holds there is no- 
obligation in conscience to come forward and list property for 
taxation. The laws so compelling citizens are merely penal. 8 

In this variety of opinion among moralists of the highest 
repute, no confessor or preacher has a right to assert an obliga- 
tion in conscience to come forward and list property for taxa- 
tion. Neither has he the right to impose the obligation of 
restitution on one who has successfully evaded listing his 
property. If one has been sentenced for failure to file a report 
he must pay the amount of taxes and fines assessed. This 
obligation after sentence has been pronounced is in commuta- 


(5) Raw 18, 5-7. 

(6) Vermeersch, Theo. Mor., vol. II, n. 567, 2. 

" ) Ryan-Millar, State and Church, p. 269, quoted approvingly by Koch-Preuss, vol. 5, 
p. 449, 

(8) Vermeersch, ibid. Wafferaert, De Justitia, vol. II, 421, says: ‘‘Quod spectat obliga- 
tionem declarandi demonstrari nequit obligationem hance esse justitiae sed immediatam obli- 
gationem si agnoscere debeamus haec solius obedientiae est. Praeterea leges qua parte declara- 
tionem imponunt esse mere poenales probabiliter defendi posse putamus.”’ 


Floral Theology 89 


tive justice. Fraud or evasion after sentence consequently 
entails the onus of restitution. 

What if a false return has been made? Here, too, there is 
a very wide range of opinion. The application of the general 
principles, says Ryan, “‘is not entirely very simple, owing to 
the complexity and injustice of our tax system, and the very 
large proportion of persons who habitually understate their 
taxable property .... in these circumstances the conscientious 
citizen cannot be required to do more than pay that proportion 
of the full amount which is paid by the majority.’”’ Vermeersch 
says: “‘Moreover before the fiscal agents have made out the 
bill as to how much the particular citizen must pay, the state 
has no acquired right. When the bill is thus made out, the 
question of an obligation in justice to pay just taxes is disputed. 
There can be no question but that civil rulers have the power 
to compel the citizens to pay their just share of taxes. But 
even before our time many have held that the intention of the 
legislator extends only to assessing fines on those caught 
defrauding. Much less does it seem as if the legislators of 
today wish to bind in conscience. Unless, therefore, in some 
country the general persuasion be to the contrary (such 
persuasion where it exists must be accepted), we deny the obliga- 
tion in conscience.”’ 

A further objection is urged. Because of false returns the 
government on account of its needs is forced to raise the tax 
rate or pass other tax measures in consequence, certain ones 
who would otherwise escape the higher rate or the new tax are 
made to suffer an injustice. The objection would be valid if 
it could be proven that the increased tax rate or recourse to 
other taxes is the direct effect of an act unjust in commutative 
justice. Now since the evasion cannot be proven to be unjust 
before the pro rata is actually assessed on the individual and 
even then it is disputed whether it is a violation in commutative 
justice the proof is wanting to show that precisely by commuta- 


(9) Vermeersch, 1. ec. 


90 SHundamental 


tive justice one is held not to place this act precisely lest this 
effect follow. It could further be alleged “‘Scienta et volentr 
non fit injuria’. A cursory study would show that property 
holders in general do not act so scrupulously. If some one is 
forced by a sentence of judge to list his property higher, he 
is the victim of an evil chance for violating a penal law. It is 
his misfortune not the other man’s blame. 

The question likewise arises: Is there not present the sin of 
telling a lie implied in such false declaration and undervalua- 
tions? | 

Officials and the public in general know full well that such 
declaration are only relatively true. Hence the words or signs 
used can be readily and usually are interpreted in their relative 
sense, namely, that is the tax value. The intention 
““‘decipiendi’’ is wanting; by this is meant the words or signs 
used are of such a nature that they do not necessarily convey a 
false notion. The malice of lying lies in the abuse of external 
sions. God gave us speech to express our internal thoughts 
externally. External signs are arbitrary for the most part and 
are interpreted according to custom and circumstances. | 

Perjury is a lie which God is called upon to witness. If 
then the external sign is not a lie there is no sin of perjury. 
In the United States no one is obliged to take an oath, a solemn 
affirmation isallthat isrequired. Furthermore, considering the 
frivolous and hurried manner in which an oath is administered 
in many cases, it may well be doubted whether the formula, 
though obviously it implies an oath, is really such. The 
“accidentale sequitur essentiale’’, the oath being subsidiary we 
can say: if the statement is not a lie, neither is the oath a 
perjury. !° 

Nearly all authors agree that internal revenue and tariff 
laws are merely penal.:: The reasons they allege are: the 
fines levied on those caught, coupled with the extraordinary 





(10) Waffelaert, lib. cit., n. 42, p. 373. 
(11) Vermeersch, vol. II, No. 567. 


Horal Thealogp 91 


means taken to catch offenders show plainly that nothing is 
left to conscience. ‘This is especially true of the enforcement 
laws of the Eighteenth Amendment in most of the states. 
“Tariff duties are saturated with economic and ethical un- 
equalities.”’12. The so called nuisance taxes are generally 
held to be penal. Laws forbidding the manufacture, sale and 
importing of certain articles, which can serve no legitimate 
purpose in themselves, oblige in conscience. The manufacture 
and sale of such things is intrinsically wrong. Articles which 
can serve a legitimate purpose but can be used for very wrong 
purposes, such as narcotics, poison, etc., may not be manufac- 
tured or sold except one have good reason to believe that they 
are to be used for legitimate purposes. As to other things 
which may be abused and by their abuse become dangerous, 
but which the general run of people do not abuse, to sell them, 
even though the sale is forbidden by law, is not held to be an 
offence in conscience. Stamp taxes on bonds, deeds, mort- 
- gages, stocks, etc., universally are held to be merely penal. 
False returns for inheritance tax, provided of course no injustice 
is done to the heirs, are likewise said to be merely penal 
violations. 


N. B.—In this matter of tax returns and of listing one’s 
goods for taxation in the United States a further circumstance 
affecting Catholics must be considered, namely, by unjust laws 
they are made to contribute doubly for the education of child- 
ren. If then they do their just share for Catholic education 
they canin conscience compute thisamount as payment of taxes. 
The new Code is entirely silent on the question of immunity 
from taxation formerly enjoyed by clerics. Wherefore can- 
onists today assert that clerics are bound to pay taxes just as 
civilians. ! 3 


(12) Ryan-Millar, lib. cit., p. 262. 
(18) Koch-Preuss, vol. 5, pp. 445, 446, 450. Augustine, A Commentary on Canon Law, 
vol. III, p. 65. 


92 Fundamental 


ARTICLE V 
Tax Officials and Their Duties 


Fiscal agents enter upon a contractural obligation with the 
government to do their full duty in finding, listing and assessing 
of property for taxation. This duty certainly arises from 
commutative justice in as far as they have a right to their full 
salary only if they do their full duty. ‘They are therefore held 
to restitution for a part of their salary if they are willfully 
negligent. | 

Would they be held to make restitution for the amount of 
taxes the government did not receive because of their negli- 
gence? The government’s right in commutative justice to the 
tax does not arise until the property has been assessed, hence 
they could be held to make restitution only for negligence in 
not collecting taxes actually assessed against property. They 
are never held to make restitution for fines which were not 
assessed because of their negligence. 

There is a difference between negligence and a conspiracy. 
to prevent the government by fraud from prosecuting its just 
rights. Thus though a man who knowingly undervalues his 
property may not violate commutative justice, he does so, if 
he presents, e.g., fraudulent vouchers or checks to show 
indebtedness. The axiom, caveat emptor, can be used to exempt 
a seller from making known certain hidden faults, but cannot 
excuse when positive fraud has been resorted to in covering 
up such hidden faults. 

The government is here the buyer and it is its business to 
investigate returns to see whether they are correct. It may 
not be hindered by positive fraud from making such investiga- 
tion. Fiscal agents who accept bribes for allowing false returns 
to pass prevent such investigation, wherefore by force of 
their contract they violate commutative justice and are held 
to make good the damage accruing to the government from 





Horal Theology 93 





this inability to collect the full tax. Those offering the bribe 
are held in solidum with them. ‘The briber, being the gainer 
by the fraud, is held first, and if he fails to make the restitu- 
tion the one who was bribed is held. 

In searching for property to list, officials need use only 
ordinary diligence. In fact they may not unduly vex citizens. 
Neither may they list below the minimum nor above the 
maximum value for tax purposes as fixed by law and the custom 
of the better class or general run of citizens. 

An obligation to make restitution sub grave arises only if 
there was a culpa theologica in re gravi. Little derelictions in 
the discharge of duty can coalesce into serious matter. In this 
case double the amount required to constitute a grievous sin of 
theft, when the amount is taken at one time, must be figured. 
The absolute norm is to be applied as for thefts from rich people. 
Some authors maintain that the sum required for little thefts of 
children from their parents is to be used here as the norm. ! 

Those who resist violently the collection of taxes, fines, etc., 
sin doubly against commutative justice: first against the 
person of the officials, and then against the government. 

Professional bootleggers, smugglers, etc., generally sin 
against charity towards themselves and their families, by 
risking the assessment of heavy penalties. Wherefore a 
Catholic cannot in conscience engage in bootlegging, as a 
business. 

A confessor will therefore: (a) impose the obligation of 
restitution only when it is really certain that restitution is 
due. (b) As there can be good faith among many, since the 
confessor is not a government official, he need not disturb 
such good faith. (c) If asked he is to exhort the faithful to 
pay their taxes, with due allowance made for Catholic school 
support, as others in the community pay. 

Specifically as regards the Eighteenth Amendment and 
Volstead Act, there is a very founded and probable opinion 





(1) Pruemmer, Manuale Juris Canonici, p. 87. 


94 Fundamental 








that this law does not oblige in conscience. (1) See general 
obligations of civil laws. (2) This law is held by many re- 
spectable citizens as an undue invasion of personal rights. 
(8) And by very many is made light of. 

(a) It is, therefore, nothing short of criminal for either 
preachers or confessor to urge the observance of this law in 
conscience upon Catholics. 

(b) Those who buy, sell, keep, make, or use intoxicants 
privately, i.e., do not engage in this as a business are not to be 
molested in conscience. | 

(c) If they are condemned by a legitimate judge (whether 
the village fee-splitting courts are legitimate in the sense of 
recognition in conscience is very doubtful) they may not use 
violence, or other frauds to prevent payment of fines. Pre- 
sumptio stat pro superiort. 

(d) Law enforcement officials need not proceed against 
possible violators unless they have real founded evidence of 
violation. ‘They are not allowed to search private dwellings, 
vehicles, etc., unless they have real evidence of violation. It 
is an accepted axiom in American law that a man’s home is. 
inviolable. Bribe taking and giving, follows the same rules as 
above. 

(e) Those who possess intoxicants, whether legitimately or 
not, though they are contraband, are the real owners until 
such intoxicants have been confiscated by the government. 
Private appropriation is theft. 

Some would find fault with Catholic theologians for what 
are called lax views on the obligation in conscience of civil laws 
and taxes. Moral theologians are not to blame for the false 
views the majority of legislators and civil jurists hold concern- 
ing the police power and sanction of the state. They cannot 
be blamed because modern legislators have banished God and. 
the hereafter from the schools and by this have brought up a 
generation that believes only in the evil chance of being caught 
and punished for violations of civil law. They are not to 


Floral Theology 95 








blame for the use of tax money in making propaganda against 
God, the hereafter and conscience. They feel that where these 
convictions against obligation in conscience are so widespread 
they would commit an injustice on the Catholic people if they 
made them believe that they were burdened where the majority 
of fellow citizens refuse to take like burdens. All advise 
Catholics to do their duty at least in the same manner and 
proportion as the others do. There is quite a difference 
between telling people you should respect every law of the 
country and to tell them unless you obey every law of the 
government you jeopardize your eternal salvation. Respect 
and external compliance to civil enactments which are just 
should always be insisted upon; observance as obliging in 
conscience can only be urged when there is a moral certainty 
that the particular law in question does so oblige. 


96 Fundamental 


CHAPTER FOUR 


Moral Education 


ARTICLE [| 
Education and Catholic Faith and Morals 


The Church does not vindicate for herself a monopoly or an 
exclusive right to teach and educate Catholic children. In her 
legislation on this subject she insists that “parents are held 
by a most serious obligation to take care, in every possible 
manner, of the religious, moral, physical and civil education of 
their children’? (Canon 1118). She has always recognized the 
native right of parents to teach their children, and further she 
has always recognized that parents are allowed to form groups 
among themselves for this purpose. She has always recognized 
that the state has interests in this matter and that the state has 
the right and even the obligation to aid parents to procure a 
good education for their children. She denies that the state. 
has a monopoly in this field or that the state has a right to 
dictate to parents to which school they must send their children. 
She has always resisted every attempt on the part of the state 
to suppress the rights of parents in this matter. The Church 
has always insisted that she has a divine right to build schools, 
engage teachers, instruct and educate children even in the 
profane sciences; therefore to give elementary, high school, 
university training in all its branches (Canon 1375). To prove 
this right it is not necessary to appeal to her inherent character 
as a perfect independent society. Just as well as other groups 
formed for this purpose she has the right to offer parents 
advantageous means of teaching and educating their children. 
From the fact that she is a perfect, independent society she has 
a right to be free from all direct interference in this matter on 
the part of the state. Because she has not been able always 








SMoral Theology 97 





to assert her right in fact, or because in order to prevent 
greater evils she has been willing by concordats or by tacit 
consent to waive her rights, in no wise prove that she has ever 
abandoned this her right to complete freedom. She has been 
willing always to enforce by her authority the just enactments 
of the state on school attendance, on the minimum of learning 
required, on the qualification of teachers to teach the profane 
sciences. But as a perfect society whose reputation is estab- 
lished by centuries of history, she has a full right to demand 
of the state to accept her assurance and guarantee in this 
matter. Where she has allowed state supervision or inspection 
as regards profane studies in her schools, she has done so as an 
act of. amity to a friendly likewise perfect society or else to 
prevent greater evils, when the state was more or less hostile 
and invaded her rights. In matters of profane science, she 
pretends to no infallibility, nor even to any superiority over 
other legitimate groups or societies. 

The Church does vindicate for herself the sole and exclusive 
right to give religious instruction and Christian education to 
young and old. In pagan countries she claims only the right 
to be allowed to give such instruction without let or hindrance 
to those not baptized, who seek it. For those who are members 
of the Church, she reserves to herself absolutely and exclusively 
this right. The Catholic Church alone has received the mission 
to teach the gospel. For those who are baptized but remain 
outside her fold, she cannot cede her exclusive right, she does 
perforce tolerate other conditions. Truth, because it is truth, 
is necessarily unwavering and unyielding. This is not intoler- 
ance in the sense in which this charge is brought against the 
Church. Right is right always and everywhere. 

“The religious instruction of the young in all schools is 
subject to the authority and inspection of the Church” (Canon 
1381, No. 1). 

The Church asserts this right declaring, ““The Ordinaries of 
places have the right and duty to be vigilant lest in any of the 


98 Fundamental 


schools in their territory any thing be taught against faith or 
good morals” (ibid., No. 2). 

“They likewise have the right to approve the teachers and 
books of religion, and on account of religion and morals, to 
demand the removal of both teachers and books”’ (ibid., No.3). 

A difference will be noted between the first and second 
part of this Canon. In the first part it asserts the direct, 
positive right to approve of books and teachers of religion; in 
the second part, it asserts the right to demand the removal of 
books and teachers dealing with the profane sciences who offend 
against religion and morals. | 

The Church’s divine mission gives her the right to command 
that ‘‘all the faithful from childhood on, are to be instructed 
in such a manner that not only nothing be taught them con- 
trary to the faith and good morals, but likewise that religious 
instruction occupy the principal place (Canon 1372, No. 1). 

“Not only parents, as enjoined in Canon 1113, but also all 
who take their place have the right and the most serious duty 
to care for the Christian education of the children”’ (ibid., No.2). 

‘“‘In every elementary school children must be given re-. 
ligious instruction suitable to their age’’ (Canon 1373, No. 1). 

“Young people who attend high schools or colleges, are to 
receive fuller religious training, and the Ordinaries of places will 
take care that such instruction is given by priests known for 
their zeal and learning’’ (ibid., No. 2). 

The code demands that such instruction be given to those 
who attend “‘medias et suwperiores scholas’’. This is understood 
to mean cultural schools, not trade or vocational schools. 1 
It does, of course, include normal schools where teachers 
are formed. These canons reject the divorce of education from 
religion and moral instruction and likewise the viewpoint 
assumed by many, namely, it is well to defer religious and moral 
instruction until adult age. And rightly so. Education with- 
out religion does violence to the religious nature of man. A 





(1) Creussen, S.J., Nouvelle Revue Theologique, vol. 53, n. 3, p. 185. 


SMoral Theology 99 


non-religious training is fitting for brute animals, it is a crime 
against the free and moral nature of man. It denies the tradi- 
tional continuity of the human race and sins against the first 
principles of pedagogy. Pretending to defer freedom of choice 
in religious and moral matters to a more mature age, inculcates 
license, scepticism, and atheism. Character can not be formed 
unless it be cast in the mold of religion. Religion of necessity 
demands a definite creed. In view of the erroneous opinions 
broadcasted everywhere, these canons should be preached from 
the housetops in season and out of season. 2 

To remove all danger to faith and morals the Church com- 
mands further: ‘“‘Catholic children shall not attend non- 
Catholic, neutral or mixed schools’ (Canon 1374). The 
term mixed school might be misinterpreted as meaning coedu- 
cational schools for both sexes, to make plain what the term 
means, the canon gives the definition of mixed schools, namely, 
those ‘‘which are open likewise to non-Catholics’’. It would 
be a too literal interpretation to extend this to strictly Catho- 
lie schools which admit non-Catholic children. However on 
several occasions the Holy See has warned especially com- 
munities of nuns not to be too free in admitting non-Catholic 
children to their schools and academies and has admonished 
that where it is done it be with watchful care lest it constitute 
a danger to the faith and morals of the Catholic children. : 

The Church does not want her children to grow up illiterate 
and therefore the canon adds: “It is the exclusive right of the 
Ordinary of the place to judge when and under which safe- 
guards, so that all danger of perversion is avoided, such schools 
may be tolerated, according to the norms laid down by the 
Holy See.’”’ From the wording of the canon it is manifest that 
this refers directly to the duty of the Ordinary in the question 
of using means at his disposal to see to it that the schools in his 
district are not neutral in the matter of religious instruction 


(2) Epitome Juris Canonici, Vermeersch-Creussen, vol. II, n. 710. 
(3) Libs cit., 711, 2. 








100 Fundamental 





and in so far refers more especially to distinctly Catholic 
countries. Yet it is evident that it refers, too, to the right of 
judging either in a general manner or in particular cases 
whether Catholic children may attend such schools. In allow- 
ing such attendance, a difference is to be made between schools 
of heretical sects and public or private neutral or mixed schools. 
‘“‘Catholic parents or those taking the parent’s place who know- 
ingly have children taught or educated in a non-Catholic re- 
ligion’’ (Canon 2819, No. 4); “those who enter upon a mar- 
riage with an agreement explicit or implicit to have all or any 
of the children educated outside of the Catholic Church’’ 
(ibid., No. 2), are subject to excommunication latae sententiae 
reserved to the Ordinary. The instruction given to our 
bishops by the Congregation for the Propagation, makes the 
same distinction: ‘“‘Above all it must be considered whether in 
the school which is to be attended there is such a danger of 
perversion that it cannot in any manner be made remote; this 
will be as often as things are taught or done in the school con- 
trary to Catholic doctrine or good morals. Such a danger as is 
evident of itself must be avoided no matter what may be the | 
temporal damage or even danger of life.”’ 4 

(a) Under no consideration may Catholic parents, guard- 
ians, etc., send children to schools, colleges, universities where 
instruction in a non-Catholic religion is a compulsory part of 
the curriculum, nor where chapel attendance is compulsory for 
them. 

(b) When this is not compulsory, the very atmosphere of 
such institutions being heretical, it would be only on most 
serious reasons with every possible precaution taken by the 
children, parents and pastors to remove the danger of perver- 
sion that the Ordinary could grant permission for attendance 
on schools controlled by sects. 

(c) This holds likewise with regard to summer schools, 
recreational camps, clubs, etc. In fact even more so, because 


(4) III. Council Balt., Appendix, p. 279 sqq. 





Moral Theology 101 


as a rule there is no very stringent reason to go to such camps 
or join such clubs. Here it might be well to note that it is the 
height of folly to try to duplicate all these fads and fancies of 
non-Catholics. Our children and their parents should be 
taught that Catholic life demands sacrifice. The burden put 
on our people to support Catholic schools is sufficiently heavy 
to forbid diversions of such funds as are available. Nor 
should the yoke be made heavier. Newman Clubs and such 
like features at non-Catholic colleges and universities may at 
times be helpful, but they should never be stressed to the 
detriment of Catholic colleges and universities. An associa- 
tion to maintain professors of Catholic philosophy, especially of 
ethics, of the history of the Catholic Church and of Catholic 
literature in non-Catholic universities, could accomplish much. 
If we are to form leaders for Catholic thought and action, the 
cultural content of Catholicism in the arts, literature and 
sciences must be emphasized. 

“Ordinaries are advised to send a certain select number of 
their clerics to universities and faculties established or approved 
by the Holy See to pursue higher studies in philosophy, theolo- 
gy, and canon law in order to obtain degrees”’ (Canon 1380). 

Existing conditions may demand that some priests attend 
lay universities, i.e., neither founded or approved by the Holy 
See. TheS. Congregation of the Consistory has issued a special 
instruction on this matter. It is summarized by Vermeersch- 
Creussen: (a) Clerics are to be allowed to attend such 
universities, not for private utility but only on account of the 
common necessity or utility of the diocese. (b) None but 
priests are allowed such attendance. (c) These should be of 
a kind as give founded hope that by their studies, their talents 
and sanctity of morals, will reflect honor and credit on the 
clergy. (d) Attendance at such universities does not excuse 
from the examens prescribed in ce. 130 et 590. (e) “No 
cleric may accept a teaching or other secular office of his own 
accord and especially not against the will of his Ordinary, if 


102 Fundamental 


notwithstanding he does so, let him be punished with condign 
punishment not excepting suspensio a divnis’’ (April 380, 
1918). Matters pertaining to priests, students or teachers in 
lay schools come under the competency of S. Cong. Concilli 
(A? Ay S:, 1923, vol} 15; p.°39): 

The commands of this instruction are applicable to nuns and 
likewise to clerics belonging to an exempt order or congrega- 
tion. For these latter, the Provincial is the Ordinary. 


Canon 1379: 

“Tf Catholic schools whether elementary or high schools 
such as are required by Canon 1373, do not exist, measures 
must be taken especially by the Ordinaries of places to establish 
SUCH e(IDIde NOL): 

“Where public universities are not imbued with Catholic 
doctrine and viewpoint, it is desirable that Catholic universities 
be founded either for the nation or the region’ (ibid., No. 2). 

“Let the faithful not be remiss to lend their aid, according 
to their means, to build and to maintain Catholic schools’’ 
(ibid., No. 3). 

The law of charity obliges every one to succor his neighbor ~ 
in need; almsgiving, prayer and fasting are the good works 
specially recommended by Holy Writ. Moral theologians 
readily excuse from the sin of neglect to give alms because 
there are so many public agencies which take care of the poor, 
the sick and the infirm that rarely there is pressing need. But 
in our country the spiritual need of children to receive proper 
instruction in the faith and to be safeguarded from perversion, 
is pressing in nearly every diocese. There, too, is a crying need 
to form leaders among the Catholic laymen, especially in the 
field of law, medicine and teaching. Such leaders cannot be 
had without Catholic university training. Here then is a 
duty of charity, almsgiving if you will, that cannot be too 
strongly impressed upon the faithful. 


Horal Theology 103 





ARTICLE II 


The Catholic School 


The canons cited make clear the notes which distinguish a 
Catholic from a non-Catholic, neutral or mixed school. The 
dominant distinguishing note is religious and moral education 
must go hand in hand with the physical and civil teaching and 
education of the pupils. Catholic doctrine must underlie the 
teaching of the profane or secular branches; at least nothing 
contrary to it must be taught. Further such schools must be 
subject to the legitimate rights and duties of the authority 
recognized and established by the Church in this matter. It 
would be a serious mistake to imagine that only the parochial 
school can measure up to this standard. The Church recog- 
nizes and approves such schools founded and directed by (1) 
parents or groups of parents; (2) directed by the state; (8) 
directed by private individuals not specially delegated by 
parents; (4) schools directed immediately by the Church. All 
these can deserve the name Catholic, provided they live up to 
the demands of the Church. She reserves the right to see to it 
that the Catholic religion is taught, that nothing is taught or 
done against Catholic faith and morals, to approve those who 
teach religion, to approve the books used for religious instruc- 
tion, to demand the removal of books and teachers which 
offend against faith or morals (Canon 13881). 

To safeguard these rights, she demands that ‘The Ordinar- 
ies of places have free access, whether in person or by delegate, 
to visit and inspect schools, oratories, recreational centres, 
homes, etc., in matters which pertain to the religious and moral 
training; the schools maintained by religious of any kind are 
not exempt from such visits, except the intern schools for the 
professed of exempt religious” (1382). 

If any of these rights or duties are denied the Ordinary 
they are not Catholic schools. 


104 Fundamental 











Instruction in Christian doctrine is to be given by the pas- 
tors and their assistants, by religious, clerics or lay, the former 
under the control of their superiors, the latter under the control 
of the priest designated by the Ordinary of the place, namely, 
pastor, chaplain or diocesan inspector, lastly by lay people 
under the immediate direction of the pastor or priest assigned 
by competent authority. The choice of books to be used for 
religious instruction such as the catechism, bible history, 
church history, etc., belongs directly to the Ordinary. ! 

However the Ordinary has not the full right to exclude from 
the schools not immediately and directly subject to him, 
manuals of religious instruction which are irreproachable in the 
matter of faith and morals. Nor has he the right to demand 
the use of one absolutely against any other. He has the right 
to prescribe that certain matters be treated and to establish a 
minimum in this matter, but in itself he has no right to say that 
a particular method, for instance, the Socratic, project problem, 
visualization method, be used. Of course, for schools which 
are directly and immediately subject to the Ordinary, such as 
our parochial schools, he has full rights as to choice of books, 
methods, teachers, etc., not only for religious instructions but 
for all the branches taught. He can demand that teachers 
belonging to religious communities, who teach in his diocesan, 
regional or parochial schools, have certain qualifications, use 
certain books, methods, etc.2 Yet too much standardiza- 
tion can prove harmful. Some individuality should be left an 
experienced teacher, and especially the approved methods of 
religious communities. When granting even exempt religious 
the needed permission to establish houses, colleges, etc., certain 
agreements may be made. * 


(1) Wernz, Jus Decret., vol. III, n. 76. 

(2) III. Council Balt., pp. 221, 222. 

(3) Council Balt., p. 223. Cf. Especially Creussen, S.J., L’ecole Catholique in Nouvelle 
Revue Theologique, vol. 53, n. 3, p. 184 sqq. 


Moral Theology 105 


ARTICLE III 


Bible Reading in the Schools 


The reading of the Bible or rather parts of the Bible in the 
public schools is fraught with many difficulties. A Catholic 
cannot allow the Bible to be studied or read from a merely 
literary standpoint. The Bible is to him the word of God, and 
as the author of the Imitation says, “to curiously study the 
Holy Scripture is unto destruction.”’ 

To look upon the Bible as a book merely for character 
building and moral training without reference to dogmatic 
principles and truths of faith it contains, emasculates the word 
of God. ‘“‘It seemed good to me... to write to thee in order 
... that thou mayest know the verity of those words in which 
thou hast been instructed”’ (Luke 1, 3-4). ‘“‘But these are 
written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son 
of God, and that believing you may have life in His name’”’ 
(John 20, 81). 

When this movement is palliated with the pretense of 
literary study or morality without dogmatism, no Catholic can 
actively promote it. The crime wave sweeping over the 
younger generation is proof sufficient that children need 
religious instruction, that the Sunday-school does not suffi- 
ciently take care of it, that religious training at home is sadly 
deficient. Educators are at their wits ends as to ways and 
means of introducing some moral training, some religious educa- 
tion into the curricula of the public school. The half-way 
measures they advocate of some hymn singing, some readings 
from the Bible unobjectionable to all the sects represented, 
practically make for a spirit of indifferentism which is as bad 
and, perhaps, worse from the Catholic standpoint than the 
spirit of non-religion resulting from the complete exclusion of 
these branches. A Catholic can scarcely give any aid to help 
them in the movement. The only stand he can take conscien- 


106 Sundamental 


tiously is to advocate a separation of the children according to 
their religious persuasions for a period a day and allow the 
various churches in the district to engage a teacher to take of 
the children during this period. Politically it would not be 
well to co-operate with obtaining the money for this purpose 
from the taxes. 

What about Catholic children attending the Bible reading 
periods in public schools? 

Where there are facilities to attend a Catholic school this 
cannot be allowed. It fosters indifferentism to say the least, 
no matter under what guise or pretense it is palliated. But we 
can well imagine a situation where it is a question of either no 
schooling, because there is no Catholic school in the place, or 
attendance on the Bible reading period, namely, the law might 
make it compulsory on all to attend. 

(a) If in the selection made or the interpretations made, 
things are taught directly against Catholic faith or morals, 
Catholics would be obliged to resist even unto death. Such 
attendance would be a denial of faith. 1 

(b) If the passages selected and the explanation given are 
colorless, every attempt must be made to have Catholic 
children excused from these periods. But if these attempts 
prove fruitless, the hardships resulting, i.e., fines assessed, or 
the children by not attending school would grow up illiterate, 
dissensions in families of mixed religion, might be a sufficient 
cause for remote cooperation. The parents and pastors of 
such children would have to redouble their endeavors to give 
the proper antidote to the spirit of indifferentism. 

(c) Where the law is not compulsory or where these hard- 
ships would not follow, Catholic children even under sacrifices 
would be obliged to absent themselves from these periods. 

Another difficulty which could scarcely be avoided would 
arise, namely, what version of the Bible is to be read? As it is 
only a question of excerpts and in the supposition of harmless 


(1) Cf. Inst. to Bishops of America, III Counc. Balt., Appendix, p. 279 sqq. 


Moral Theology 107 


extracts the law against Bible reading of Protestant versions 
might be waived (Canon 1399). 

For the sake of insuring uniformity before action is taken 
by any confessor, priest or pastor, the matter is to be placed 
before the Ordinary of the place. The code as well as the in- 
struction declare the Ordinary to be the competent judge. 

If American Catholics are to be the vanguard of culture and 
progress, a position due them, they need leaders in thought and 
action. Neither a knowledge of the faith nor yet a deeper 
understanding of its truths will suffice. A continuity with the 
past must be established. This postulates an impregnation 
with the culture of the ages, a heritage of which every Catholic 
should be proud. ‘This heritage is found in the achievements 
of Catholics in the arts, literature and sciences. To cultivate 
this Catholic sense, psychology of action and culture is the 
special prerogative of the Catholic college and university. 


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Table of Contents 


PAGE 
PYRE Lo 2 Pn ge OE ag Bie. Ne nN ee BOC Rete Mn ot a ee AE 3 
MEE OLE ES Wal ee ety Pew eben ia ses MRE LON cents lk oa | 5 

CHAPTER ONE 
aREBa (OleANDAVLORAL CBLIGATION joi ie eons eee ee Ls 
inesbsevconologcy oi.the Pree Wile. 0) ey cee Doe ial 
IePINOCDI OfMvLOTLIL Veta 2 Gis ca ho Fee, 16 
EY SSUES 1S ae ad 0 LO OE dl EE 28 
SITU. od Beaphependle 2 Oot aes Bek aE edit Reni ie Rene ae Ca 26 
Moral Indifference and the Perfection of Free Choice. 35 
PULSE MEETISAIITL Youn Oar etter an Alcott Wie set Nt EMO ats en 38 
CHAPTER TWO 
Ee RUSE HOT ONS pee ak oo ac gc ha a 2 43 
CHAPTER THREE 
rset nities PION OB: LL UMAN, LiA Wise ses eos wc eek ok wa 63 
DAWG: GIvil Government eiew- a. cele bass ea 63 
aeeiemcino: borce of. Civil Lawak chav havens 73 
The Taxing Power of the Government.............. 82 
Obligation in Conscience of Tax Laws.............. 86 
axerrcinis and, | heir Duties: 22.2 ssn oes 92 
CHAPTER FOUR 
SHIPS E21 BY BCI (eS a OO ee emia fa 96 
Education and Catholic Faith and Morals........... 96 
SCE AT NOL COOOL. ott hase wie es ene cheeks ich ana Bae 103 
Pei Oleetveacinonintne OCROOIS tm accals. oot ke oo alet ea 105 


109 


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